Rhythm of Four
by Luuuurve
Summary: A drumming madman prophesies the deaths of sixteen trillion, while in London, the crashed police box in her parking space becomes the least of Dr Alice Quick's worries, when the self-proclaimed alien running amok in her hospital spirits her away. 11th Dr.
1. Chapter 1: The White Queen

_**Author Note:**_

__

During the Sound of Drums, the Master told the Doctor that he was resurrected to save Gallifrey, but instead fled in terror after the Emperor Dalek entered the Cruciform. Did that strike anyone else as strange? The Master was always a psychopath, but he was never a coward.

So what really happened by the Cruciform? Why has the Master aways protected his existence - no matter how miserable - at all costs? And what could be so important that he would tell his life-long nemesis such a humiliating lie?

_**Disclaimer:**_

__

The Doctor isn't mine. He must be relieved. ;-)

There's a quote from The Sound of Drums by Russell T. Davies in this chapter and the whole fic is liberally sprinkled with quotes from Lewis Carroll for reasons that will hopefully make sense later.

oOoOoOo

**Rhythm of Four**

****

by

Luuuurve

**Chapter 1: The White Queen**

Towering over the only spaceport on Selachi, the most remote and lifeless planet in the galaxy, the eroded peak was the precise shape of a chess piece - a white queen. Ambassador Adele Gold gazed at it through the window of the spaceport. As the last human left in this Galactic Federation delegation, with the survival of the Selachi race at stake, and time running out, for their diplomatic shuttle was already maneuvering in the sky overhead for landing, she knew it was time for her next move.

"We cannot replace Selachi's oceans, Ambassador Proxima," she said, turning to the head of their delegation. "The supernova will only vapourise them again if we do, and oxygen is already at dangerously high levels. The Selachi wasted our nanotechnology by making useless trinkets. Please forgive my bluntness, but if the Galactic Federation does not move the Selachi to a healthy planet with oceans, the entire race will go extinct."

Ambassador Proxima blinked his vast eye. Like all Alpha Centaurians, he was a hermaphroditic land octopus with a single blue eye instead of a face, and a tendency to go hysterical at the slightest provocation. He wasn't hysterical now, but the prominent veins on his round hairless green head were throbbing. "Replacing the oceans is the Galactic Federation's only option, Ambassador Gold. I wouldn't expect a female to understand," he said. Ironically, his voice was high-pitched and unmistakably female. He waved his top two arms to emphasise what he was saying, while the bottom four fiddled nervously with his yellow cloak. "The Galactic Federation will never approve the relocation of the Selachi to another planet. There isn't a single uninhabited planet with a suitable mixture of sea and land in this galaxy. One race will be forced to share and that would be untenable." His arms waved in agitation. "I am certain the Selachi will not do well on my home world."

Adele shook her head. "With respect, Ambassador, I disagree." She kept her face neutral, fighting the urge to smile at the hexapod's cowardice. "I think the Selachi would do rather _too_ well on your home planet. Or on Earth, for that matter-"

The sibilant whisper of Ambassador Xerlyli cut her off. "This discussion is pointless. The oceans must be replaced for the Selachi refuse to leave their home planet. My people will support them in this matter, for we lost our home planet many thousands of years ago." His scaly green Ice Warrior face was impassive. But the way he folded his arms, revealing the sonic weapon attached to one claw-like hand, was eloquent.

Adele's heart sank. Ice Warriors rejected violence, except in self-defence. But their definition of self-defence varied. Mere disagreement was sufficient, and after three days of debate, the tempers of all three of the delegates were frayed.

She did not want a gun battle. The Selachi needed the Galactic Federation's help, not their squabbling. Besides, she wasn't armed. Her human colleague, Ambassador Lloyd Skinner, had carried a laser pistol. But he had apparently given up in disgust and teleported off the planet a few hours earlier, without so much as saying goodbye. He hadn't replied to any of the increasingly furious messages she had sent him from her wrist computer. Embarrassment had stopped her from explaining his disappearance to the other delegates.

Proxima quivered at the sight of the Ice Warrior's sonic weapon, and his voice became even shriller. "Alpha Centauri will, of course, reject moving the Selachi and support continued food aid, Ambassador Xerlyli. The Galactic Federation-"

"-is doomed! Planet after planet will fall. Sixteen trillion will die!" An unfamiliar voice boomed from behind the delegates. Then it rose into a spine-chilling peal of maniacal laughter.

Proxima shrieked, and the three delegates whirled around to face the speaker.

He was walking towards them across the spaceport; a tall and filthy scarecrow of a man, wearing a tattered dark suit. His hair and beard were long and matted, and his too-wide grin was manic. His fingers drummed on every available surface as he approached. On abandoned chairs and tables. On walls. Four beats, then a pause, and then another four beats. A ceaseless and maddening rhythm of four. He was chewing gum to the same rhythm.

"What do you know of this, human? Speak!" Xerlyli hissed, brandishing his sonic weapon at man, who stopped a few metres away with a contemptuous smirk.

But Adele stepped between them. "Ambassador Xerlyli. I must apologise. This human doesn't know what he's saying."

Xerlyli narrowed his eyes and did not lower his weapon. "How so?"

Adele watched the man take the wad of chewing gum out of his mouth, stick it on the window, and sneer at them as if daring them to arrest him for littering. "He's clearly a Wanderer," she said. "A homeless human who survives by hitching rides from spaceport to spaceport." She lowered her voice so only her fellow delegates could hear her words and the pity in her voice. "The poor fellow is obviously insane. We should try to help him."

Unfortunately, the supposed Wanderer had very good hearing. "You think I'm human? Fools!" he roared, making Proxima shriek again. "I am a Time Lord. The Time Lord Victorious! I looked into the Untempered Schism and the Time Vortex chose ME. The fate of the entire universe pivots around my actions. Time and space are mine to command." He glared at Adele and his burning eyes all but pinned her to the wall. "Do not DARE pity me!"

"The Time Lords are extinct," Xerlyli hissed, his claw-like fingers tightening on his sonic weapon. "They perished fighting the Daleks in the Last Great Time War."

"I survived. I always survive," the said the self-proclaimed Time Lord. Now his fingers were drumming on his chest. He muttered a mad counterpoint to their rhythm. "Never die, never die, never die, never die."

Adele tore her eyes away from him and tapped her wrist computer. The entry records for the spaceport appeared. On such an inhospitable planet, the list was very short and she was able to see the most likely name immediately. "Mr … Eos Heartsmet?" she asked.

The mad man turned in her direction. "That is not my name. Call me the Master," he said, and his grin widened. His teeth were very white and straight in his grimy face, and his eyes burned.

Adele rechecked her computer. "Master?" she said. "But you entered Selachi under the name of Eos Heartsmet, a year ago, with your wife Tithonus."

"Lucy," the Master corrected her. "Her name is Lucy." He flung his hands skywards. "How she nags at me! She's as bad as the drums!"

"The drums?" asked Xerlyli.

"The endless drumming in my head!" ranted the Master, beating the rhythm of four on his thighs. "The call to war! I killed Lord President Rassilon for infecting me with it." His hands balled into fists. "But the drumming didn't stop. Still, it comes closer and closer. Will I ever be free?" His last words were full of despair. Abruptly, he dropped his face into his hands.

Adele bit her lip when she heard his dry sobbing above the continuous soft whimper of terror coming from Proxima. She was caught between pity, disgust and fear.

Then the Master spoke again, his voice muffled by his hands. "My people will rise again. Gallifrey will rise. Once there's a new Gallifrey in the heavens, maybe then it stops. The drumming. The never-ending drumbeat."

Adele saw Xerlyli's deep-set black eyes glance her way. "Where is Ambassador Skinner? He trained in Time Lord history. Perhaps he understands this drumming?"

"I've messaged him but he hasn't replied," Adele was forced to admit. "I think he may have teleported back to Earth."

"No, he's dead." The Master lifted his head with a sudden fiendish grin. "If he wandered off by himself on Selachi, he'll be eaten by now. I bet he was delicious."

"Eaten?" Proxima squeaked.

The Master threw his head back and laughed. Then he opened his arms. "Can't you see what's happening here? Of course you can't, you poor, blind insects," he said, with a mocking shake of his head. "We stand at the tipping point. The single most important Moment in time since the universe began and it is mine alone. Mine since I looked into the Untempered Schism and it chose me. Sixteen trillion will die. The greatest massacre in the history of history itself begins now." His eyes blazed and a cruel smile spread across his lips as he gazed at Xerlyli. "RIGHT now." In a flash of movement, he reached into his torn jacket and aimed out a long silver and gold device at the Ice Warrior.

Alarmed, Xerlyli aimed his sonic weapon but it was too late. The tip of the Master's device glowed red. A laser beam stabbed out and speared through Xerlyli's thick chest armour as if it were paper. The Ice Warrior only had time to groan before he sagged down dead to the floor.

Proxima screamed, a sound as chilling as fingernails down a blackboard.

"Oh, do shut up," said the Master. Casually, he fired his weapon at the hexapod's eye and the scream cut off. Gasping in horror, Adele half-turned to catch the gelatinous dead weight that Proxima had become.

"A laser screwdriver will always trump a sonic weapon," said the Master, laughing and sending Xerlyli's weapon skidding across the floor with a single kick. "I don't know why anyone bothers with sonic." Then his eyes focused on Adele.

She lowered Proxima's body to the ground. Outside, there was a rasp of gravel, and the whine of the shuttle's engines started to fade. It had landed. But she knew it only held a pilot. No troops, and no chance of rescue from this mad Time Lord.

So she stood up and faced the Master, standing tall, proud and calm with her shoulders back. She was going to be killed, and perhaps it was her fault. She had told Xerlyli the Master was harmless and lost their only chance of fighting back.

But death didn't come immediately. Though the Master still aimed his laser screwdriver at her chest, he had put his head on one side and was smiling at her in a way that seemed affectionate.

"Waiting for death, child? You humans really are amazing creatures. I actually regret killing so many of you." Some of the madness crept back into his smile. "No, I don't. It was fun at the time." He sighed. "I was going to start an empire with the humans from the end of the universe. The new Time Lord Empire lasting a hundred trillion years. But the Doctor prevented me. Such a pity!"

"The Doctor?" asked Adele. "Doctor Who?"

The Master burst out laughing. "Excellent question," he said. Then he started moving slowly towards her.

It was all Adele could do not to back away.

"I'm not always bad tempered, you know," he said, indicating the smoking corpses at their feet. "Pat me on the head and see how pleased I'll be!"

Adele wasn't the least bit tempted to pat him on the head. "Why do you think the Galactic Federation will fall?" she asked.

The Master tapped the side of his head with a rhythm of four. "The drums tell me. I see the Moment in my head. All that leads to it, and all that comes of it." His voice softened. "Go on! Pat me on the head." When Adele didn't move, he reached out and captured one of her hands. "Listen to the drums," he said, pressing it to his temple.

As she touched his head, the universe disappeared.

She was falling into a deep black pit made of screams and explosive, thunderous drumming. Before her eyes, she saw every inhabited world of the Galactic Federation fall. Saw fire consume planet Selachi with a rhythm of four and rip it asunder. Saw trillions of sentient beings of all races backing away as a mysterious menace attacked without warning on every inhabited planet at once. There was no one to save them. No way of fighting back. Blood of many colours stained the sand, and still the menace advanced, savagely feasting on those still alive and hungry enough to kill until there were no victims left.

Then light and the universe returned. She was curled in a foetal position on the floor of the tiny spaceport and the Master was bending over her, still holding her hand.

She no longer cared about his laser screwdriver, or her life. She no longer cared about anything but preventing the horrors still fresh in her mind. Snatching her hand back, and not even sparing the Master a glance, she struggled to her feet and sprinted past him to towards her shuttle. She was through the spaceport doors, up the gangplank and shouting orders to the pilot in seconds.

The Master watched the gangplank rise and the shuttle take off into the blue sky. "Some diplomat she is," he said aloud to no one in particular. "Not even a thank you." He froze, as if listening to a voice only he could hear. "Lucy? Sweetheart, what is it this time?" There was a pause while he listened. "You want me to…?" His voice rose in frustration. "All right, all right. I'll do it. Don't nag me."

He stormed off, aiming petulant kicks at the bodies in passing. "Why am I always such a martyr to women?" he asked the empty spaceport, as he drummed the rhythm of four.

oOoOoOo

**_Author Note:_**

_Please review!_

___Many thanks to ooxc for the beta read! :-)_  



	2. Chapter 2: The Blue Police Box

_**Chapter 2: The Blue Police Box**_

Blue police boxes don't just drop from the sky. But this one certainly gave the impression that it had, this dreary mid-winter morning in Harrow, north of London.

Dr Alice Quick stomped on the brakes of her car and stared up in disbelief at the upright snow-covered intruder impacted several centimetres into her reserved parking space at Northwick Park Hospital.

Students! It would be just like the interns to have craned in a surprise for her. Though she wasn't sure of the occasion. Christmas and New Year had passed and it wasn't her birthday.

What worried her most was whether anyone had gotten hurt while playing this practical joke. Had the police box fallen off the crane? It had clearly struck the ground with great force. Its windows were shattered and the surrounding asphalt was cracked and raised up. Though the snow was much disturbed with footprints, it was still possible to make out the shape of where a body had been lying outside the police box's double doors.

Quick drove into the nearest empty parking space. (Her boss was going to be furious!) Then, still staring at the police box, she pushed back her shoulder-length black hair and rummaged in her handbag for her iPhone. Someone in the Accident and Emergency department, where she worked, would know what had happened. She was just flicking down her list of contacts when she heard the howl.

It went right through her - the loneliest and most desolate sound she had ever heard. Involuntary tears rose in her eyes and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. But the howl hadn't come from an animal. This she knew immediately, without questioning how she knew. A person had made that howl. Someone so desperately unhappy that words alone could not express the unendurable rawness of their grief, fear, remorse, and torturous, agonising loneliness.

The nurturing instincts that had driven Quick to become a doctor, rose up and compelled her. She had to find and help the person making that sound.

Her finger was still poised to call Accident and Emergency, but the screen flashed up the name 'Chang' and the phone started chiming. A&E were calling her. At least, one of the interns was. Still shaken from the howl, she answered the call.

"Where are you?" Chang's voice bellowed. There was an awful lot of noise where he was. He could scarcely be heard above the shouting and running footsteps in the background.

"I'm in the car park," said Quick. "Somebody crashed a blue police box into my parking space." She wondered if the intern would laugh at the success of his practical joke.

But Chang's voice was tense and not the least bit guilty. "I know," he said. "Come to A&E at once. We've got a situation in here."

"Is it the man who howled?"

"Howled?" asked Chang. "What are you talking about?"

Quick was taken aback. "I heard a howl just a minute ago. It came from A&E."

"Oh, you mean the shouts of the raving loony currently somersaulting over the tables in here?" Chang's voice was frantic.

"The…? Never mind, I'm on my way," said Quick. She shoved her phone back into her handbag and started hurrying towards the hospital entrance door as fast as she could through the snow.

oOoOoOo

"He was found lying unconscious face down outside that blue police box about twenty minutes ago. Security heard a crash and thought there'd been a car accident. But on their next sweep, they found him and called our department," said Chang.

He and Quick were walking down the corridor towards the waiting room.

"We got him onto a stretcher and wheeled him inside, but he woke up and tried to escape," said Chang. "He's barely breathing, there's something very strange about his heartbeat, but somehow he can still run and jump like an Olympic athlete. We've been chasing him for at least five minutes."

"Who is he?" asked Quick as they entered the waiting room. It was pandemonium. Injured people waiting for treatment had pressed themselves up against the walls to stay out of the way of the sprinting horde of security staff, nurses and even two uniformed policemen who had come in to get their faces stitched up and had joined in the fray.

"We don't know," said Chang. "I think he's homeless. I searched his pockets before he came to. No wallet. No ID. There's a key on a chain around his neck and I found this in his pocket." Chang held up a long silver, white and black device.

"Oh, thank you!" The device was promptly snatched out of his hand by a pale man, apparently in his mid-twenties, with floppy dark hair, a quizzical face, and large expressive eyes. He was wearing a tattered brown suit with blue pinstripes that seemed to have been made for a different-sized person. "I thought I'd lost it!" he said, holding up the device and beaming at it. "I haven't been without a sonic screwdriver since Terileptil blew my last one up." The man kissed the device, gave them both a cheeky grin that was long on charm and short on sanity, winked at Quick, and suddenly ducked.

The arm of a large male nurse, clutching a syringe full of tranquilliser, whistled over his head, missing him completely.

The young man straightened up. "Who do you think I am? ET?" he asked the nurse. "I have absolute power over time and space. I won't let humans catch me and perform experiments on me!"

The nurse took another swing and the young man ran for it.

"Wait, Brian!" said Quick, holding out her hand at the nurse. "He's manic. I don't want to see him pumped full of drugs until I find out what drugs are already in his system."

"Good luck catching him without the tranquilliser," said Brian dolefully.

Quick did her best. She chased after the young man. The others were already slowing down with exhaustion. But the young man seemed tireless and ready for a few more circumnavigations of the room. He vaulted over the waving arms of the policemen with a grin at Quick, and landed with his back to her.

Then Quick heard the howl again, and shivered to hear it so close. It came from the young man. There was no question about that, though she couldn't see his face. Some of the desperation from the howl infected her and she held out her arms. "Don't keep howling. Please! Let me help you," she said.

"Howl?" asked Chang at her side. He was out of breath from running. "What do you mean howl? He didn't make a sound."

The security staff and policemen were staring at her strangely and Quick realised it had happened again. She had heard something that no one else had. A blush rose in her face.

But incredibly, the young man stopped and turned to face her. "You can hear me?" he asked in amazement.

Quick didn't have time to reply. Sensing their chance, the security staff and policemen descended upon him like a rugby scrum, until all she could see of him were his legs kicking in the air. They wrestled him to his feet, with the two policemen on either side of him, pressing all their weight onto him to keep him still.

"I don't want to embarrass you, but that feels really good," he told them.

"Hear that, Meadows? He fancies you," said one of the policemen to the other.

"Shut up, Banksy." Scowling, Meadows pulled the young man's arms behind his back.

Quick brought a wheelchair and Meadows and Banksy pushed the young man down into it, handcuffing his wrists to one of the arms of the chair. He was still clutching his sonic screwdriver and he was furious.

"You ungentlemanly monsters! How dare you manhandle a girl like this?" he shouted.

"You're not a girl," said Quick.

"I'm not?" the young man stared at her in surprise. Then he sighed in relief. "Thank goodness for that! I thought I might have been a girl with a very big Adam's Apple."

"You should be so lucky," said Quick, folding her arms. There was nothing wrong with being a girl. _She_ was a girl. She turned to the panting horde of policemen, security staff and nurses. "Thank you for catching him. I'll take care of him from now on."

They were already backing away in relief, now that the young man was caught, heading back to their tasks looking a trifle more exhausted and irate than usual.

When Quick turned back to the young man, he was awkwardly manipulating his sonic screwdriver to point at the handcuffs binding him to the wheelchair. The tip glowed blue and a grin spread across his face, but sensing trouble, Quick snatched the sonic screwdriver away.

The young man pouted at her. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Quick."

"Yes, you are."

"Ha ha, I only hear that joke ten times a day," she deadpanned. "I'm Dr Quick," she added in a more normal voice.

"Snap! My name is the Doctor too."

"No second name? Just the Doctor?" she asked, wondering if he was hiding his real name or simply couldn't remember.

"Yes, just the Doctor. Mind if I call you Quick? It could get a little confusing otherwise. Two Doctors..."

"Go ahead," said Quick.

The Doctor beamed at her as if she were a long lost friend. "Please to meet you, Quick. I'd shake your hand, but I'm a bit tied up right now." He looked longingly at his sonic screwdriver in her hand.

She stuck his sonic screwdriver into her coat pocket. "I'm sorry, Doctor. But I can't let you go until I've run a few tests. You're not yourself at the moment," she said.

"You have no idea how true that is," said the Doctor with feeling, as Quick started wheeling him through the waiting room. The patients were leaving the protection of the walls now that the chase was over. They were muttering to each other and glaring at him.

"I'm sorry about the disturbance. Sit down, please," Quick told them. "We'll get to you as soon as we can."

"Where are you taking him?" asked Chang.

"One of the examination rooms, I suppose."

"They're full up," Chang warned her. "This idiot chose a busy time to go crazy on us."

Quick gave Chang a pained look, and he walked away looking a little sheepish.

"Crazy? You think I'm crazy? You don't know crazy until you've seen the Time Lords on the last day of the Time War, like I have," the Doctor bellowed after Chang. Then, to Quick's alarm, he gasped and doubled over in pain. As the howl of loneliness once again tore through her mind, the Doctor's manic but cheery composure shattered and he started ranting. "Master! I know you were scared, but why did you have to run away when the Dalek Emperor took control of the Cruciform? You were our last and only hope - the perfect warrior! The Time Lords resurrected you to save us. You didn't even stay long enough to see how corrupted they became. Now they're dead and you're dead, Gallifrey's gone, and I'm all alone!" Tears started to streak his face.

Alarmed, Quick dabbed at his tears with an unused tissue she fished out of her pocket. The people in the waiting room were staring at the Doctor in a blank, dehumanising way, as if he were something particularly interesting on reality TV. She couldn't possibly examine him here.

"I'll take you to my office, Doctor. You're not alone," she said.


	3. Chapter 3: Uncanny Valley

**Chapter 3: Uncanny Valley**

Quick's touch seemed to bring the Doctor back to reality. "You mean that?" He looked up at her with puppy dog eyes.

She couldn't help smiling. Though far from sane, he was so instantly beguiling. "Of course I do, Doctor. I'm here to help you," she said.

The Doctor smiled back, though it was only a thin veneer over the ocean of misery she had just witnessed. "That makes a change. Usually I'm the one doing the helping," he said. Then his smile became more genuine. "Quick, did you know you were telepathic?"

She laughed as she pushed the Doctor, still handcuffed to his wheelchair, towards the corridor leading to her office. "No, I didn't know I was telepathic, Doctor," she said with absolute confidence. "That's because telepathy doesn't exist."

"A skeptic, huh?" The Doctor twisted his body around so he could look up at her face.

"Never jump to conclusions. That's my motto," said Quick breezily.

"But I bet you're always hearing things that other people don't."

"Certainly," said Quick. "I've got very good hearing."

"Nobody's hearing is _that_ good. You're powerfully telepathic," said the Doctor. "Why, only other Time Lords should be able to hear me Yowling."

"Yowling?" said Quick. "Do you mean those howls?" She watched the way every head in the waiting room turned to follow them and put on a short burst of speed so that she and the Doctor could get safely out of sight and hearing down the corridor. She dodged around nurses and past full garbage bins. The cleaners hadn't been through yet.

"They're not really howls," said the Doctor. He had faced forwards and braced himself at Quick's burst of speed, but now he had turned back around. "They're bursts of pure telepathic energy from the limbic system in my brain. An involuntary alarm call to other Time Lords saying, 'Help! This one's been alone for too long. Come and give him a hug!'"

"And that will make you better will it? A hug?" Quick wasn't paying much attention to his words, ridiculous as they were. She had spotted something strange - the Doctor wasn't breathing. But she doubted the proof of her own eyes, because he was still conscious and talking.

"Yes, but there's no Time Lords left to hear me," said the Doctor sadly. "We were the most social race in the galaxy. Big families, all living together. I had forty-four cousins living under the same roof. Without constant companionship, Time Lords go mad."

"Why is that?"

"It's because we're the oldest and mightiest race in the galaxy. Our technology is unmatched, our lifespans almost infinite, our mastery over space and time nearly complete. We swore never to interfere with the other races, but we watched them - miserable insects living short, brutish lives - and it made us realise: we … are … gods!" As the Doctor spoke, a disturbing change came over him. His charming puppy-like demeanour was replaced by a cold cruel arrogance. He sat up straighter and his eyes burned.

It looked unnatural, and Quick didn't like it one bit. So, with a flick of her wrists, she rammed his wheelchair into a full garbage bin. There was an explosion of garbage.

The Doctor flinched and seemed to wake up. "Ouch! What was that for?" he asked, his voice suddenly normal again.

"It's my instant cure for megalomania," she said, putting the banana peel that had come to rest upon his head back into the bin. "That's what Time Lords appear to be afflicted with when they're alone for too long."

"Thanks, I needed that," said the Doctor, looking chastened. "I wish Adelaide had done something like that, instead of..." His voice trailed off.

"Who's Adelaide?" asked Quick, when the Doctor had remained silent for a few seconds with a stricken expression on his face.

The Doctor blinked and came back to himself. "You're right, we go insane with power," he said, giving the impression he was trying to change the subject fast. "Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it," he quoted. "William Pitt the Elder said that, and he'd met our Lord President Rassilon so he could speak from experience. We need someone around us to keep our feet on the ground. But they've got to be sane, that's very important. Otherwise, they just reinfect us with madness."

"I haven't seen you at this hospital before, Doctor. Is this the first time you've Yowled?" Quick felt ridiculous saying the word, but humouring him seemed the only way to make him to talk about his history. She reversed away from the bin and resumed pushing him down the corridor.

"Yes," said the Doctor, his shoulders slumping. "I've never Yowled before. Never been alone for so long." He turned around. "I've always had companions - Time Lords or humans. Mostly humans. But my human friends are all too busy to travel with me now. They've got responsible jobs, or they're married. Or worse," he shuddered.

"Sounds like you need to make some new friends," said Quick.

"I'm good at making friends," said the Doctor. His puppy-like demeanour was back and she smiled. She didn't doubt him for a moment. But then his smile faded. "At least, I used to think so. Lately, I've been losing all my best potential human companions to Uncanny Valley."

Quick had never heard of Uncanny Valley. She wondered if it were somewhere in America. "Couldn't you just go into Uncanny Valley and rescue them?" she asked.

"Oh, Uncanny Valley isn't a place, it's a human state of mind," said the Doctor, a sudden grin splitting his face. "But I can just see the sign for it if it _were_ real: 'Welcome to Uncanny Valley. Population: you! All you can do here is scream and run!' You've never heard of Uncanny Valley, Quick?"

She shook her head.

"How can I explain it?" The Doctor looked thoughtful, then he shot her one of his too-wide grins. "I know. Do you think I look human?"

Quick's incredulous laugh was all the reply he got.

"I'll take that as a yes," said the Doctor. He was pouting. "But that's exactly why Uncanny Valley happens. It wouldn't be so bad if I actually _looked_ like an alien."

"You don't look _anything_ like an alien." Quick was still laughing.

"Which is why the truth comes as such a horrifying revelation," said the Doctor. "You think I'm one of you - an ordinary human. Well, maybe not ordinary." He tossed his brown locks. "Smarter and better looking than most! But then you realise."

"What?"

"An amoeba living in the sludge four kilometres down in the Pacific Ocean is more like you than me. A big hairy spider scuttling across your lap is less horrifying. Uncanny Valley is the disgust and fear humans feel when they're in the presence of something human, but not quite human enough. It evolved to help you keep a safe distance away from the sick or the mad. But it also frightens humans away from perfectly sane and healthy Time Lords. Like me!" The Doctor looked sad. "I lost Mia to Uncanny Valley. A famous astronaut, an amazing companion if she hadn't run away. Even Rose ran away from me at first. Poor Rose." He leant back and spoke in a matter-of-fact voice. "Next time, I won't give the human a chance to escape. I'll catch them and spirit them away before they have a chance to run. Uncanny Valley wears off in an hour or so."

"Did I just hear you planning to kidnap someone?" asked Quick, a severe expression on her face.

The Doctor looked up at her like a naughty schoolboy with his hand caught in the sweet jar. "Uh … no?" he said, plastering an unconvincing expression of innocence on his face. His hands were working away in the handcuffs as he spoke.

"You'll hurt yourself on those cuffs if you keep struggling," said Quick. With all his talk of kidnapping, she was very glad he was handcuffed.

"I'm not struggling. I'm unpicking them."

Alarmed, she looked at his hands and the handcuffs, but she couldn't see a key or lock pick, or anything else to suggest that the Doctor's statement was anything other than a delusion. She relaxed a little. "I don't believe you're an alien, Doctor," she said. They had reached the door to her office by now, and she fumbled in her pocket for the key.

"Why not?"

"Because if it were true, you'd be my third alien patient this week," she said, pausing with the key in her hand. "On Monday, I had woman who said she was a High Zoonian from the planet Zxyon."

The Doctor's eyes flicked from side to side in confused concentration then focused on her. "There's no such planet," he said.

"Fancy that! How about Wryax?" Quick asked, slipping the key into the lock.

"Never heard of it!"

"That's where the gentleman on Wednesday said he was from," Quick said.

"He was a fraud!" The Doctor was full of righteous indignation. "Who does he think he is? Pretending he's an alien."

Quick bit her lip so she wouldn't laugh. "He also said he had a radio in his head, which told him what the next lottery numbers were going to be."

"I know what they're going to be too!" the Doctor blurted out. Then he saw the way that Quick was looking at him and winced. "Want me to buy you a ticket?" he finished lamely.

"No thanks, Doctor. Aliens are flavour of the month. Make that the decade," she said, pushing open her office door. "What with the talk about the Christmas Star, the ghosts and the silvery men, and those flying tanks-"

"Daleks."

"-everyone thinks London is crawling with aliens. I've got a paediatrician friend at Royal Hope Hospital who'll swear blind after a pint or two that he was taken to the moon by rhinoceros aliens. But the government says there's no such thing, and I don't see any particular reason to doubt them. Harold Saxon got in as Prime Minister by saying he was going to prove that aliens existed. Gorgeous, charismatic man, but utterly raving mad."

The Doctor squeezed his eyes closed, as if the words hurt, and nodded. "You're right," he said.

"Saxon disappeared only a short time after his election. Lucky for us! But he took the US President Elect with him, wherever he went. Everyone thinks they're dead," said Quick.

The Doctor's eyes were still closed. But he nodded once.

"It's thrown British-US relations back at least two hundred years. Now, every week, I see patients at this hospital assuming that they're turning into aliens when they actually have the chicken pox. I have patients telling me about their magical alien powers and expecting me to believe them, just like everyone else does. I don't _believe_ in aliens, Doctor," said Quick, as she pushed him inside her office.

"Try again." The Doctor had opened his eyes and there was a mischievous smile on his lips. "Draw a long breath and shut your eyes."

Quick was going to say something cross, but she saw where the Doctor's eyes were focused and smiled instead.

He was looking up at the poster on Quick's wall, Lewis Carroll's White Queen from Through the Looking Glass. "That's what the White Queen said to Alice, when Alice refused to believe she was one hundred and one, five months and a day," said the Doctor. "Of course, the White Queen was just a baby. I'm nine hundred and six, four months and three days."

"Impossible!" said Quick, but she was laughing. "Do you like my poster?"

"I do. And the tiny white queen chess piece you're wearing around your neck," said the Doctor. "I could scarcely miss your necklace. It kept hitting me on the head every time you leant over."

"Sorry about that," said Quick, tucking the necklace back inside her shirt.

"That's all right." Suddenly, the humour went out of the Doctor's expressive eyes, and they bored into her. "You see the White Queen a lot, don't you? The words 'White Queen' and the shape of the chess piece seem to follow you around. They appear at important moments in your life."

"Yes," she replied, dragging out the word. She was unwilling to give away too much personal information to this, or any patient, but she remembered how she'd been in a cafe called the White Queen when she decided to study medicine. Or how the column of smoke above her burning house had formed the shape of a white queen chess piece. "How do you know this, Doctor? Don't say telepathy."

"I wouldn't dare. You've told me there's no such thing," said the Doctor, with an indulgent smile. "I have two words that keep appearing in my life too: Bad Wolf."

She smiled back at him, and did let something slip. "I find the White Queen a very interesting thought experiment, Doctor. She lived backwards through time. She'd start screaming with pain, and know she was about to prick her finger, then she'd prick it and be cured. Imagine if the passing of time could cure you of everything? No scars, and no bad memories. Your actions and experiences of the past would be utterly left behind, because for you they would be in the future and they hadn't happened yet."

"You could be punished, though," said the Doctor. He was very still, and staring at her intently. "What about the King's Messenger in Through The Looking Glass? He was in prison being punished for a crime, but nobody knew what his crime was because his trial was days away, and he would commit his crime days after that. He might never commit it at all."

"That wouldn't be fair," said Quick. "Suffering for a crime that you might never commit. But if you lived backwards through time, perhaps your memory would work backwards and forwards too?"

"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards," said the Doctor. "A human memory. Time Lord memories work both ways. I remember what I've done and I've got a pretty good memory of what I'm going to do, depending on the flux levels in the local part of the Time Vortex. The closer I get to the future, the better I can remember it."

"So if the King's Messenger were a Time Lord, he'd be able to remember the crime he hadn't committed yet, but he'd been punished for all his life?" Quick thought about it, and let out a peal of laughter. "That's amazing, Doctor! But what nonsense we're talking!"

"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like," said the Doctor. "But I'VE heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"

"Shush! The Red Queen said that, not the White Queen," said Quick. She took off her coat and hung it on the back of her door, next to her white medical coat.

The Doctor did go quiet. He was looking around her office, admiring the other posters on the walls. "Curiouser and curiouser," he said. "So you're an amateur astronomer?"

"I've got a telescope at home, but these photos were taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, Doctor. Look at the Crab Nebula. That's my favourite." Quick pointed at the poster on the wall above her desk.

The Doctor peered up at the frozen explosion. "It looks very pretty in a photograph taken from a thousand light years away," he said. "But supernova remnants like that aren't nice to be near. Is that SpaceShipTwo?" he added, indicating a poster of a graceful white rocket ship with a tilt of his head.

"Yes," said Quick with enthusiasm. "It's my dream to go on it, I've been saving up for years. It flies twenty-one kilometres above the Earth and you spend six minutes weightless!"

The Doctor doubled over with laughter. His handcuffs rattled. "That's not a space ship, that's a wheelbarrow!" he said. "My TARDIS could travel to the other side of the galaxy in the time it takes SpaceShipTwo to go twenty-one kilometres!"

"SpaceShipTwo is real and your TARDIS, whatever that is, isn't real," said Quick calmly. "Just like the only positive evidence of life beyond Earth is not you but this rock here." She tapped the plastic reproduction of a pale stone sitting as a paperweight on her desk.

"What's that?" asked the Doctor, leaning forward with interest.

"Meteorite ALH 84001. It smashed off Mars millions of years ago and landed in Antarctica. Then some scientists at NASA put it under the microscope and found shapes that are probably bacteria. But they're smaller than any bacteria on Earth," said Quick.

She could not have predicted how violently the Doctor would react. His mouth and eyes opened wide with terror and the cords stood out in his neck. "Tiny bacteria on Earth? From MARS?" he yelled. "It's the Flood!"

"For goodness sake, what's wrong?"

"The Flood's come to Earth! Has anyone put Meteorite ALH 84001 near any water? Has anyone touched it with bare hands? Have they eaten any? Not the Flood, please not the Flood." The Doctor's words came out in a frantic rush.

"It fell into ice in Antarctica thirteen thousand years ago so it's been frozen all this time," said Quick. "Nobody would have touched it with bare hands. It's cold down there. They'd have been wearing gloves. Besides, they would have been very careful not to contaminate it."

The Doctor wasn't calmed. "Is the meteorite producing water?" he asked.

He was panicking and now Quick was absolutely sure that he wasn't breathing. A normal person would have been panting with emotion, but she couldn't see the Doctor's chest moving at all. An involuntary shiver ran down her spine. Nevertheless she tried to calm him.

"Meteorite ALH 84001 is the most studied bit of rock on Earth, Doctor, and if it started producing water, the whole world would know about it within hours," she said. "You're acting like those bacteria are alive and dangerous. They're not - they died so many millions of years ago that they've fossilised. There's no chance they could infect anyone with the Flood. Whatever that is."

"Fossilised," the Doctor, much relieved. "That's good. That's very good. Phew!"

Then Quick heard the howl again. It wasn't as loud as before but it was so creepy that she flinched. Her voice shook as she said, "I can't see your lips moving, Doctor. You must be a very skilled ventriloquist."

"The best," he said proudly. "Fred Russell always said I brought his dummy, Coster Joe, to life far better than he ever did. But Yowling isn't a sound."

"Is it ventriloquism that makes you look like you're not breathing?" she asked.

"Not breathing?" The Doctor stared up at her in confusion, then down at his chest. He did a double take. "Quick, I'm not breathing!" he announced, as if he'd just made a major discovery all on his own.

"So breathe," said Quick.

The Doctor appeared to try. He pumped his shoulders up and down. But nothing happened. "I can't!" he said. "My respiratory bypass system is stuck. Hit me on the chest, please!"

"I can hear the malpractice suit already," said Quick.

But the Doctor wasn't listening. He was too busy remonstrating with his torso. "Stupid respiratory bypass! Why didn't you turn yourself back off again after I regenerated?" He looked up at Quick with pleading eyes. "Humans will get Uncanny Valley around me if I don't breathe. I might even run out of oxygen in a few hours. Just one little tap on the chest? Please?"

With a sigh, she bent down and rapped him on the chest with her knuckles. Immediately, he started to pant.

"Thank you, Quick. That's better! I never got the hang of regenerating. Maybe I should have stayed a few more centuries at the Academy?"

"It's time I checked your heart," said Quick, in the most business-like tone she could manage. "I can't believe we've been talking for so long."

"I like talking to you, Quick. It's doing my Yowling a world of good. Would you like to come with me? Be my next companion and travel through space and time? The TARDIS would love to have you on board."

"I can't."

"Why not? Do you have family keeping you here? A husband? Children?" the Doctor inquired.

To her horror, Quick felt herself tearing up. She turned away and busied herself looking for her stethoscope, so he couldn't see her face.

But he still realised. "I'm sorry you lost them," the Doctor's voice was sympathetic. "Want to talk about it?"

"No!" She dashed a tear out of her eye with the back of her hand and pulled her stethoscope out from under a pile of papers. "If I believed you could fly me into space, Doctor, I'd jump at the chance. Hold still." She unbuttoned his jacket and shirt part way so she could slip the stethoscope inside that she had considerately warmed on her hand. Adjusting the ear pieces, she heard the thumping of a healthy heart and moved the stethoscope so she could check his lungs. But instead of lungs, she heard something that she hadn't been expecting.

The thumping of another healthy heart.

She staggered backwards away from him with a gasp, still clutching her stethoscope.

"Uncanny Valley?" asked the Doctor in a worried tone, as if he expected her to fling open the door and run screaming from the room.

Truth be told, she was more stunned than scared. It hadn't really sunk in yet, and if she really wanted to be sceptical, duplicated body parts weren't absolute proof that the Doctor was an alien. He could have had an undiagnosed parasitic twin inside.

But it was enough to make her call Torchwood.

She dropped the stethoscope, reached for her iPhone and started flicking through her contacts list.

"I'm not dangerous, Quick." The Doctor still seemed anxious that she was going to run away at any moment. "If you want proof, call my friend Captain Jack Harkness." He rattled off a number and she paused. It was exactly the same number she was about to dial.

"How did you know I was going to call Torchwood?"

"I didn't," he said.

"A government directive came out last week. In short, it said, aliens don't exist, but just in case, medical personnel must report potential aliens or paranormal events to Torchwood. The doctors here were having a laugh about it," said Quick. "We thought we'd be reporting six people a week each."

"Jack's going to be furious about all the frauds," said the Doctor, making a face. "But he'll be delighted to hear about me." The too-wide grin returned to his face.

She dialled the number. It rang, then a bored-sounding operator picked up the phone.

"Torchwood, may I direct your call?"

"This is Dr Alice Quick from Northwick Park Hospital. I'd like to speak to…" She hesitated. Did Torchwood have an extra heart department?

"Captain Jack Harkness," shouted the Doctor, loud enough to be heard by the operator.

"Jack?" The operator's voice suddenly became respectful, as if she dealt with loonies on a minute by minute basis, but here was someone who actually knew what they were talking about. "Putting you through," she said.

The phone rang for a moment, and a deep, attractive male voice answered. "Captain Jack Harkness speaking."

Quick introduced herself again, then she said, "I've got a patient here who seems to know you."

"Lots of people know me," said Jack. Quick could almost hear the wink in his voice and it made her smile. It was easy to tell he was a shameless flirt, and she wondered if he looked as good as he sounded.

"How many of the people who know you have two hearts?" she asked him.

The gasp and shout of joy down the other end of the line were so loud she had to lift her phone away from her head to avoid being deafened.

"Doctor!" Jack yelled.

"Jack!" the Doctor called out with a grin, clanking his handcuffs.

"Let me guess what your patient looks like, Dr Quick," said Jack. "He's got a brown suit with blue pinstripes on that fits like a glove. Spiked up brown hair. Brown eyes. Very cute!"

"His hair is quite long and dark and he's got blue eyes," said Quick. "He's wearing the suit you're talking about, but it doesn't fit him very well. In fact, it's torn."

Jack went quiet, apparently dumbfounded. Then he said, "Who could that be? The Doctor doesn't have blue eyes. I hope it's not…"

"It's me, Jack!" the Doctor interrupted. Strangely, he seemed able to hear Jack on the phone from across the room. "Remember that restaurant on the pier in Cardiff? You were telling Rose, Mickey and me about that time you saw the Ixonian Tusk Monster. Fifteen of you. Naked! Then Brockovich fell and you turned to him and said…"

"I _knew_ we should have turned left. DOCTOR!" Jack yelled. "You've regenerated!"

"I'm still not ginger," said the Doctor.

"I bet you're still gorgeous. Is he gorgeous, Dr Quick?" asked Jack.

"He's a little … young … for me," she admitted awkwardly. "Captain Harkness…"

"Call me Jack."

"Okay, Jack. I'm calling because the Doctor isn't well."

"What's wrong with him?" Instantly, the flirtatiousness left Jack's voice and he became serious.

"Some … rather strange mental problems. Connected to the fact he's been without a companion for too long, he says. Apparently," she added deadpan, because she still wasn't entirely convinced that this whole thing wasn't going to turn out to be a gigantic practical joke. "The Doctor needs a hug."

"The Doctor needs a hug? Shut up, Gwen," Jack said to someone nearby him who had just wolf whistled. "Why don't you give him a hug, Dr Quick? No, wait! DON'T give him one. If there's any Time Lord hugging to do around here, I'M going to do it. I'm not going to miss a chance like this. Merciful heavens, it's my lucky day! And the Doctor's too." Jack's joy was almost orgasmic.

"Jack, don't get so excited. This is for medicinal purposes only," Quick warned him.

But Jack wasn't listening. "I'm on my way. See you both in an hour or two. I'd be there sooner, but Gwen and I are in a hot air balloon flying over the Lake District right now," he said.

"You're where?"

"Long story. Stay with the Doctor and look after him, Dr Quick." Suddenly Jack was deadly serious again. "He's the most important patient you will ever treat. More important than the Queen or the Prime Minister. It's your solemn duty to the British government, no, make that to everyone on Earth, to keep him safe."

"Jack, I have a whole waiting room of patients to see."

"Not anymore. Your services have been requisitioned by the British Government on behalf of Torchwood. You're to look after the Doctor until I arrive. Any dereliction of duty is an imprisonable offence. Do you understand, Dr Quick?"

"I understand," she said. Inwardly, she was fuming at his cheek. How was she going to explain this to her boss? First she'd taken her parking space, now she was apparently stuck babysitting one patient, while the rest of them were queuing out the door.

"See you both soon," said Jack and hung up.

Quick looked at the Doctor. Strangely, he didn't seem overjoyed at the news that his friend was coming to see him. Instead, he was crossing his legs so tightly that they resembled a chastity belt.

"I'm done for," he said.

"I thought Jack was your friend?" Quick was puzzled.

"He is, but he's always wanted to be more than just a friend. Jack's had a crush on me for years. Hugging will be just the start, I'll be on my back with my clothes off, before you can blink." The Doctor looked horrified at the prospect.

"You really think he's going to force himself on you?" Concerned, Quick took a step closer.

"Jack won't think of it like that. He'll think he's doing me a favour. A favour that will encompass twenty positions and several hot, sweaty hours on my part. Help me, Quick! I don't want to end up as the fifty-thousandth notch on Jack's bedpost. All I need is a hug! Can I get one from you, please?" The puppy dog expression Quick found irresistible was back on his face.

She hesitated. "Doctor, I could go to prison," she said.

They sat in silence for a minute. The Doctor was still looking up at her and she squirmed at the desperate appeal in his eyes.

Then the Doctor played his trump card. "You know, Jack's going to _love_ the handcuffs," he said.

"All right! I'll hug you!" Quick threw up her hands in defeat. "Just don't tell Jack."

She approached the Doctor in his wheelchair awkwardly, bending her knees so that their heads were the same height. She put her arms around his shoulders and leant in until she was hugging him. She felt his two hearts beating against her chest, and then she felt him tense.

Screeching through her head, louder than ever before, came the Yowling. As the side of her head touched his, a confused set of images tumbled through her brain. She saw Prime Minister Harold Saxon, as clear as day, with his black suit and shiny smile, then she saw him again, this time dressed in a ragged black hoody, his hair gone mysteriously blond and his body thin and wasted. She saw a pretty black woman wearing a white medical coat and raising what looked like the sonic screwdriver, then she saw a woman with beautiful red hair, and a blonde woman, always a blonde woman, smiling, laughing and running. More people appeared, these ones were tall, majestic and clad in long robes of crimson and gold.

The Yowling reached a crescendo. The Doctor thrashed in a way that suggested he'd lost control of his body and she hung on grimly His body seemed to be rippling below his skin, and she wondered if he were having a heart attack or an epileptic fit. The faces were coming too fast for her to see them properly now. It felt like her head was splitting open.

Then, as quickly as it had started, the paroxysm stopped. The Yowling faded away…

…and she realised his hands were on her back.

She pulled away with a start. The open handcuffs clunked on the floor as she did so. She stared up in horror as the Doctor leaped to his feet, twirled around and beamed at her. The weight of misery that had dragged him down since she had known him was gone. He positively glowed with health and happiness.

"Thanks for the hug, Quick," he said. "And now it's time to go."

Her jaw worked up and down without making a sound. She backed away until her table hit the back of her legs, before she managed to ask, "How did you get the handcuffs off?"

"I told you I was unpicking them. I got them off before you made that phone call to Torchwood. I was only pretending they were still locked." The Doctor's grin was far too wide. "Didn't want to scare you." He dipped his hand into the pocket of Quick's coat hanging behind the door and brought out his sonic screwdriver. Laughing, he threw it into the air, caught it again and tucked it into his jacket. Then, with a cheeky grin at her, he put her white medical coat on over his suit, and opened the door.

This action unfroze her. "Doctor, stop!"

"I'm going to the TARDIS. Catch me if you can, Quick," he said. He gave her a rakish smile, wiggled his eyebrows at her and slipped out.

Hardly knowing what she was doing, she grabbed her iPhone and ran after him.

He was strolling down the corridor as if he owned the hospital, heading towards the waiting room and the exit. He turned his head at her yell.

"Doctor, come back at once! Jack wanted me to stay with you!"

"Come with me," he called over his shoulder.

"No! Doctor, you're going to put me in prison. Come back!" Quick held up her iPhone threateningly. "I'll call security!"

"Really?" The Doctor's grin broadened.

"Yes!" She flicked down her list of contacts. Her finger was poised above security's number when the iPhone's screen went black.

She looked up. The Doctor was standing with one arm extended, pointing his sonic screwdriver at her phone. The tip of the strange device glowed blue, lighting up the Doctor's rather smug expression.

Quick stared down at her dead iPhone, then up at the Doctor, who gave her a provoking little wave, and turned and kept walking down the corridor.

With a shriek of fury, she ran after him.

Why couldn't she catch him? He was only walking, and she was running, but somehow it was taking all the running she could do just to keep up with his walk. Bold as brass, he swept through the waiting room, past the patients that he had run amok in front of barely an hour before. None of them even glanced at him. There was something about his masterful presence, coupled with the medical coat, that prevented anyone from giving him a first glance, let alone a second.

He was getting away and Quick wasn't getting any closer, but she didn't give up. The Doctor was taunting her. He kept glancing over his shoulder to see if she was still there, and childishly sticking his tongue out when he saw her.

They were approaching the hospital entrance, when she spied them - the two policemen who had handcuffed the Doctor to the wheelchair in the first place. Now stitched and bandaged, they were walking out of the door, deep in conversation.

"What's that blue box in the car park?" asked Banksy.

"That's a police box," said Meadows. He was a lot older than Banksy. "They used to use them in the old days before radio. There was a telephone in a box on the outside, and a little office inside."

"How come they got rid of them?" Banksy asked.

"I guess they were too old-fashioned," said Meadows, with a shrug.

Neither policeman looked up as the Doctor sauntered right past them.

But Quick hailed them. "Stop him!" she yelled.

The policemen paused and turned around to look at her.

"That's the man you captured in the waiting room. He's getting away!" She gestured frantically at the Doctor, who was now well ahead of them across the snowy car park, heading towards the blue police box.

The policemen looked at the Doctor and seemed to see him properly for the first time. "It's him!" said Meadows. He and Banksy started running. But Quick had already sprinted past them.

The Doctor reached the police box. He fumbled around his neck and pulled out a key on a necklace. With one last wink at Quick, he let himself inside, but didn't close the door completely.

She would have laughed if she hadn't been so out of breath. So this was the TARDIS - the vehicle that made SpaceShipTwo look like a wheelbarrow? It was wooden box hardly big enough for two people! The Doctor truly was insane. But now, at least, she had him cornered.

"Doctor, I've got you now," she crowed triumphantly and ran inside…

…and kept running and running and running. Reality hit her like a ton of bricks. She was inside a tiny blue police box and sprinting across a huge vaulted room many metres across. In the centre was a hexagonal console, and in the middle of that was a translucent column. But there was no sign of the Doctor.

Then she heard him behind her, slamming the doors shut. He leaned back against them. "No, Quick. I've got you!" he said.

She stood there hyperventilating and unaware of her own screams, while he dashed past her to the console and starting flicking levers and pressing buttons. The translucent column in the centre of the console started moving up and down, in sync with the sound of a powerful engine.

Outside, the policemen heard Quick make a gasp that rose to a scream, suddenly cut off by the slamming of the doors. With a grinding engine noise, the blue police box faded away, returned, then faded again, each time fading more until it and the engine noise disappeared completely.

"That was cool," said Banksy. "Why'd you tell me they were old-fashioned?"

Meadows said nothing. He was staring open-mouthed at the snow-free square hole in the ground where the blue police box had been.

Inside, Quick was having a monumental visit to Uncanny Valley. All she could do was scream and run.

oOoOoOo

_**Author Note: **Please review!_


	4. Chapter 4: Cruciforms

**_Author Note:_**

_I'd originally intended to write this chapter in Facebook style, with Quick recording her adventures live, and previous companions commenting. _

_But Fanfiction Dot Net gobbled up the indents I put in to make the chapter look like Facebook. So I've had to split the chapter and rewrite the latter part as prose. There will be a blog chapter later._

oOoOoOo

**Chapter 4: Cruciforms**

Three days later Uncanny Valley was a distant and embarrassing memory for Quick. In its grip, she'd run for nearly an hour through the TARDIS with the Doctor in hot pursuit. Through rooms filled with clothes from every era of every planet, down an endless corridor, and finally stopping - gasping for breath and too exhausted and amazed to be frightened any longer - by a swimming pool the size of an inland sea.

The Doctor was now her best friend. She no longer cared he was a two-hearted alien with an annoying habit of shouting, "Geronimo!" By now, she'd had plenty of proof that there were far worse aliens than Time Lords.

Like these flying tanks - no, Daleks - for instance.

Quick and the Doctor were standing inside a Dalek flying saucer, having been teleported there moments before. The room was vast and circular, dominated in the centre by a mysterious cross-shaped white box as big as a bus.

Daleks were everywhere, making adjustments to the the box, hovering behind consoles and gliding through the air. Five of them had surrounded the teleport pad, ready to drag away what they thought would be another pair of hapless Ood. But they froze as their glowing blue optic sensors registered the Doctor's presence. Quick winced. Though they made no sound, the nearest Daleks were broadcasting telepathic screeches of terror.

Instantly, the chatter of a hundred harsh electronic voices ceased and every eye stick turned in their direction.

Alarmed at the sudden attention, Quick glanced at the Doctor and understood why the Daleks were screaming. Her boisterous, beguiling and apparently young companion of the last few days was standing tall and motionless; a veteran warrior radiating such ancient and terrible fury that she took an involuntary step backwards, though his anger wasn't directed at her.

"I knew it," said the Doctor. "The missing Ood came from a island on Ood Sphere called Voodrell. That's Ancient Ood for Bad Wolf. So," he demanded, casting his eyes over the cross-shaped box and back over the Daleks. "What have you done with the Ood?"

As if a switch had been released, the Daleks started shrieking hysterically. "The Doctor! The Doctor! The Oncoming Storm!" With their guns twitching in terror, they backed away, towards a much larger Dalek on the opposite side of the room. It was bronze and black like the others, but apparently stationary. Cables hung from every part of its casing.

"Orders, Emperor! Give us orders!" A hundred electronic voices clamoured.

"Be silent." Lights flashed on the domed head of the stationary Dalek. "I will deal with the Doctor."

The Daleks obeyed. Silence fell.

"So you're alive," said the Doctor. He was staring at the Dalek Emperor and Quick had never heard such bitterness in his voice. "The Time Lords are extinct, but not the Dalek who entered the Cruciform and corrupted their minds. How did you survive? I thought Rose had killed you."

"The Bad Wolf?" The electronic voice was scornful. "Doctor, I escaped the Time War in a crippled ship. I lived to recreate the Daleks, not once but twice. A mere human infused with the Time Vortex cannot kill _me_." He paused for a moment and a faint wheedling note entered his voice. "You should leave now, Doctor. The Ood you are looking for are not here."

The glowing white stone hanging around Quick's neck, next to her white queen chess piece, darkened to stormy grey at the Emperor's words. "You're lying. They _are_ here," she said, holding up the stone as proof.

"What is that?" The Dalek Emperor's voice rose to a screech.

"An Orb of Truth," said the Doctor, glancing at Quick with a slight smile, which vanished when he turned back to the Emperor. "An Ood invention. It only glows when the truth is spoken."

"Ood Sigma gave me this," said Quick. "It was the last thing he did before he disappeared. Before _you_ took him." Her voice trembled with rage. She didn't need the Orb to know that the Dalek Emperor was lying. The missing Ood were calling out to her telepathically. They were nearby, and they were suffering.

"Ood Sigma called me for help," said the Doctor. "The Elders thought an ancient curse had reawakened and the Northern Lights were snatching Ood caught outside after dark into the sky. But Quick and I checked the places where the Ood had disappeared and we found traces of teleport radiation. So we fooled your teleport scanner into bringing us here by sticking a couple of translation spheres in our pockets and going for a midnight stroll." He reached into his coat and dumped a cable with a white ball onto the floor.

"We waited _hours_ in the snow to be picked up," Quick added, opening her heavy coat and dropping her own translation sphere. "You're running a sloppy operation here."

"On the contrary. The operation has been effective," said the Dalek Emperor. He'd decided it was useless to lie, or perhaps he was boasting. Judging from his tone, Quick suspected the latter. "The Northern Lights legend provided just the cover we needed and all three thousand captured Ood have been processed. You are too late to save them."

Quick glanced down at her now brightly glowing Orb in dismay. She showed it to the Doctor in horror, and he grimaced and wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders. "He's not lying. But the Ood are alive. I can sense them," she muttered in his ear. "They're in that box. While there's life, there's hope, right?" But she didn't believe her own words. The box was far too small to hold so many Ood. She desperately hoped it was bigger on the inside, like the TARDIS.

The Doctor gave her shoulder a squeeze, and confirmed her worst fears by not replying. Instead, he released her and advanced towards the Dalek Emperor. "Why are you doing this?" he demanded. "I'm sure there's more to your operation than the sheer pleasure of torturing the gentlest race in the galaxy?"

"Indeed, Doctor," said the Dalek Emperor. "The Ood form the core of a technology I acquired from the Time Lords during the Time War. For millennia, the Daleks sought out the secret of Time Lord communication. You appear to be individuals, but you have," the electronic voice became even crueler. "Or rather _had_-"

The Doctor flinched.

"A connection between your minds," the Dalek Emperor continued. He sounded pleased with himself and Quick clenched her fists in rage. "Though you hid it well, you were a gestalt race like the Ood. A hive mind. And a gestalt race always has a hub. Their greatest weakness! For the Ood, it was the Ood Brain, which the humans stole so they could use the Ood as slaves. For the Time Lords-"

"It was the Cruciform," said the Doctor wearily.

"It was the greatest pleasure in my life to enter the Cruciform, Doctor. To feel every Time Lord in existence bow to my will and become perfect killing machines like myself. Even you, Doctor. Especially you. You were a renegade, not fully connected to the Cruciform, but the Time Lock you created after I entered your mind was the finest example of genocide I have seen. You killed your entire race. Your friends. Your family."

"I was _preventing_ genocide on an even larger scale," said the Doctor. "If I hadn't created the Time Lock, the Time Lords _you _ corrupted would have destroyed time itself and everyone in it."

"See how you defend the slaughter of billions. Worthy behaviour for a Dalek." Though the Dalek Emperor lacked a face, a fiendish grin was audible in his voice. "I thought you'd escaped my control, Doctor. But you're still mine."

"You don't control me!" the Doctor shouted in a rage, making the nearest Daleks draw back further in terror. "I threw you out of my mind years ago. You know nothing about me or what I plan to do."

"And that is the truth. I see that infernal Orb glowing," the Dalek Emperor sighed. "But it will not be the truth for much longer, Doctor. Soon, I will know all about your plans to resurrect Gallifrey."

The Doctor froze. His jaw dropped and his eyes opened wide. "Resurrect Gallifrey? What are you talking about?"

"You cannot fool me." The grin had vanished from the Dalek Emperor's voice. "Every reading of the Time Vortex points to the return of the Time Lords and their home planet within two hundred thousand rels."

"Two days?" The Doctor seemed bewildered. But a spark of hope was dancing in his eyes.

"The Daleks will not stand by and let their greatest enemies return, Doctor. So I ask again: how do you intend to resurrect Gallifrey?"

The Doctor had regained his composure. "You're madder than I thought," he said. "The Time Lords are dead. Gone forever, every single one of them. I … I killed them. They'll be dust inside the Time Lock by now."

"And yet they will return," said the Dalek Emperor impatiently. "So you will not tell us, Doctor? Even the Orb of Truth is fooled? Never mind, I have a more powerful way of getting an answer. Daleks, activate the Cruciform!"

To Quick's horror, the white walls of the cross-shaped box became transparent. Trapped inside were row upon row of the brains - only the brains - of the captured Ood. They were floating in a yellowish amniotic fluid, joined together by an intestinal mass of black wires. Their telepathic wails of pain and misery as the power struck them made Quick stagger. She was almost sick.

"I learned so much from the Time Lords during the Time War," said the Dalek Emperor. "How Cruciforms create a synergy between minds. These Ood were chosen because they were the most telepathic and time aware of their race. Joined together, there is no mind they cannot penetrate and no future that they cannot predict. You will not be able to hide the truth from me, Doctor. But I think I shall test my new device on an easier target first: your human companion. Her brain will burn, but that is your fault for bringing her here. Cruciform - show me the human's memories."

"My name is-" she only just had time to say, before a tsunami of telepathic power washed her mind away.


	5. Chapter 5: Memories

**Chapter 5: Memories**

The power of the Dalek Cruciform swept Quick backwards through her memories.

oOoOoOo

_Half an hour ago. Midnight on Ood Sphere._

__

Ankle-deep in snow, she gazed up at constellations she didn't recognise. An aurora was dancing across the sky in shimmering, curtain-like folds, bright enough to tint the snow green. She stamped her feet and hugged herself inside her heavy jacket to keep warm. Her breath came out in great clouds.

But the Doctor's did not. He sat cross-legged and motionless in the snow, wearing only his suit, and staring up at the sky with a strange intensity.

"Aren't you cold?" she asked him.

He shook his head. "It's healing for a Time Lord's body temperature to drop below freezing. I do it all the time when I'm sleeping," he said, without taking his eyes off the sky.

"Thank goodness I don't have to share a bed with you." She followed his gaze up to the sky. "The aurora's so bright."

"It's fake," he said, with a scowl. "There's a cloaked ship in low orbit interfering with the magnetic field. All part of the plan to blame the kidnappings on the Northern Lights legend."

"Is Ood Sigma on that ship?" She stared up at the sky but she couldn't see it.

"I'd say it's almost certain."

oOoOoOo

Blinded with pain, her mind burning, Quick heard a scream and realised she was making it. The Cruciform was relentlessly winding back her mind like an old-fashioned audio tape. She fought to push it out of her head, and felt her neurones stretch to breaking point. She screamed again.

Somewhere nearby, the Doctor was shouting. But Quick couldn't hear him properly.

The words he had spoken that morning were clearer, as they replayed in her head.

oOoOoOo

_"Ood Sigma? Are you sure?"_

__

"Yes, Doctor. He was taken last night when he went out looking for the two of you." The Ood councillor's voice sounded calm, but his trembling shoulders betrayed his agitation.

The Doctor stepped backwards and thrust his fist in the air. "You'll pay for this!" he bellowed at the blue sky and shook his fist. "Do you hear me? I'm coming after you." He whirled to face the Ood councillor. "I need a translation sphere."

"Two translation spheres," Quick said.

The Doctor stared at her.

"I'm coming too," she said, intimidated but determined.

His eyes narrowed. "Absolutely not. It's too dangerous," he said.

"They've taken Ood Sigma, whoever they are. You're not the only one who wants him back," she said.

The Orb of Truth around her neck brightened, and the slightest smile twitched the corners of the Doctor's mouth. But his face became grim again.

oOoOoOo

Her eyes flew open. She was lying on the floor and the Doctor was above her now, cradling her head in his arms. "Fight them," he said.

The moment she realised he had spoken without moving his lips, she saw another face peering over his shoulder. A man with sharp features, dark, intense eyes and spiked-up brown hair. He was wearing the same brown blue-pinstriped suit that the Doctor had been wearing when she first met him. Then over his shoulder, she saw a grim-looking man with short hair and a black leather jacket, and behind him, a man with long curling hair and a dapper suit. Then another man and another in an impossible line that stretched beyond the ceiling. Somehow she knew that they were all the Doctor.

She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. But she could still see the line of Doctors, even with her eyes closed.

"The power of the Cruciform," said the Doctor. Again, his lips didn't move. "You can see through time, minds and matter."

She gasped and half sat up as another burning pain went through her head. Her eyes widened as she saw the Daleks across the room. She could see right through them - into their casings. And she realised that she'd been wrong to assume, from their voices, that they were entirely mechanical.

Each casing contained a wriggling globule of tentacled flesh, topped with an exposed brain and an eye. She could see their minds: dark, and enslaved, without imagination or pity, in the case of the new Daleks. But behind them, the baleful mutated eye and vast, twisted mind of the Dalek Emperor met her gaze.

"The Cruciform is leaking energy into the brain of the human female," the Dalek Emperor said. "The Ood are fighting their programming. Increase the power by forty percent."

Immediately, she fell back, blinded by the rush of pain through her head. But she could still hear the Doctor's voice in her mind, and she realised he was speaking to the Ood.

"Fight them! It was working."

oOoOoOo

_Three days ago, she picked her iPhone out of the snow by Ood Sigma's feet._

__

He crouched down to help her, and she tried not to recoil at the proximity of his face. Shrieking and dropping her phone once had been embarrassing enough.

"My apologies for startling you, Dr Quick," he said, with the infinite patience of his race. But his eyes held the faintest touch of mischief as well. "It is true that I look like a bald man surprised in the act of eating a squid."

She clapped her hand to her mouth. "You can hear my thoughts," she said. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude."

"Your description of my appearance is both accurate and understandable. The Ood are not very similar to humans," he said, offering his right hand to help her up. "And I am only the second real alien you have ever met."

She chuckled in amazement and mustered up the courage to take his hand. It was soft and cool. "You're reading my mind again. Pleased to meet you," she said, letting him help her to her feet and giving his hand a shake before she let go.

His slanted red eyes were kind. "Likewise," he said. "It is always a pleasure to meet a companion of the Doctor." The silvery orb on a chain around his neck brightened at his words.

She stared at it, mesmerised. "That's beautiful. What is it?" she asked.

oOoOoOo

Now Quick could see Ood Sigma's transparent form right in front of her. He was standing at the head of a great crowd of Ood. When she reached out her hand towards him, the whole crowd took a step nearer. She could feel their agony, her own was nothing by comparison.

"The Doctor is correct," all the Ood spoke at once. "If we all work together, we can control the Cruciform. The Dalek Emperor was foolish to use our brains instead of copying the mechanical Cruciform of the Time Lords. His sadism will be his undoing. But we need your help."

"My help? How?" she asked. The pain had reached a point where she could barely speak. Memories of fleeing the Doctor through the TARDIS were playing in her head. She didn't know if she was standing up or lying down.

"We can take control of this ship's central reactor. But you must distract the Dalek Emperor. He is busy with the Doctor and won't expect you."

"How?" she asked through clenched teeth.

"You have done it already. Focus your attention on the Dalek Emperor and look into his mind. The Cruciform will do the rest."

Then Ood Sigma spoke alone. The faint touch of mischief was back in his eyes. "Sit up and give him a taste of his own medicine, Dr Quick."

"Give him? Oh, yes! I will!" She felt for the floor to get her bearings. She could see through the walls and ceiling to the wiring inside, and then out through plated armour into space. It made her aching head spin. But the slanted eyes of Ood Sigma were smiling at her and she forced herself to sit up.

The Dalek Emperor came into view. Eleven Doctors surrounded him and he didn't even glance in her direction. Shuddering with disgust, she focused on the glistening greenness inside his casing. If his body was hideous, his mind was worse - so full of hate that there little room for any other emotion. She didn't want to go in there.

But she had no choice. His eye, blank and golden like that of a toad, glanced in her direction. She was discovered and had to act fast.

Shouting a silent war cry, she plunged into the mind of the Dalek Emperor.

oOoOoOo

_**Author Note:**_

_And the next chapter is all about the Master!_


	6. Chapter 6: The Perfect Warrior

**_Author's Note:_**_ Recalling events from Genesis of the Daleks, Frontier In Space, Invasion of Time, Dalek, and Doctor Who: The Movie (specifically the Master's execution by the Daleks) this chapter is an attempt to recreate a scene that we have only heard about. The meeting between the Dalek Emperor, and the Master by the Cruciform on Gallifrey._

oOoOoOo

**Chapter 6: The Perfect Warrior**

Entering the Emperor Dalek's mind was like plunging into a foul, dark sewer of hatred. Memories of massacres sickened Quick until it was only her anger - something she usually fought to control - that was keeping her going.

The Dalek Emperor was consumed with dread over a memory. He'd created the Dalek Cruciform in order to search through space and time, and see if his suspicions about the memory were true.

Full of morbid curiosity, she reached for the memory, but was mentally beaten back by the Emperor, who took revenge by forcing her to relive one of her own worst memories...

_Choking smoke. Standing there in her pyjamas, she opened her bedroom door, and was confronted by a sea of flames. Her home was lost. All she could do was run. She was so scared..._

Furious at the invasion, she gritted her teeth, and fought back by reaching for his memory again.

This time, she caught it.

oOoOoOo

_It was the first year of the Last Great Time War, and the Daleks were winning._

_The Dalek Emperor was flying over a red and golden planet, stained purple and green by his digital vision._

_Gallifrey._

_It had taken the destruction of eight decoy planets to find the Time Lords' true home._

_Ten thousand Daleks flew in formation around him. Far below, Gallifrey was burning. Red-hot craters marked the places villages once had been. Wildfires were consuming the silver leafed forests, and roaring through fields of red grass. The Daleks brought devastation to every planet they visited, but here it had a certain eerie familiarity. The once pristine and beautiful home of the Time Lords now resembled Skaro, his war-torn home planet._

_Blasphemous thought, but perhaps the two most powerful races in the galaxy weren't so dissimilar after all? Both were time aware, telepathic, and sensitive to the turning of the planets._

_And after he entered the Cruciform, the minds of the Daleks and the Time Lords would be exactly alike._

_But first he had to get there. The Time Lords were fighting back with enough desperation to make him think they knew what he had planned._

_On the horizon, the cracked crystal sphere of the Time Lords' Citadel spat white laser fire. He watched impassively from the centre of the formation as the outer layer of Daleks were struck, and burned. A time torpedo, trailing white smoke, twirled up from the ground and exploded, instantly ageing the foremost five hundred Daleks a thousand years. They crumbled into dust, which blew back onto him._

_He ignored it. "Retaliate," he ordered, watching the formation close to cover the positions of the lost Daleks. He cared nothing for their loss. They were pawns in his game, and victory was near._

_One by one, the weapons of the Time Lords fell to a hail of Dalek laser fire. By the time he was circling above the Citadel, the barrage had stopped._

_But he was still wary. Hundreds of crashed Dalek flying saucers lay around the Citadel in drifts like circular Autumn leaves. Silent testament to the Time Lords. The most powerful enemies the Daleks had ever faced._

_And far below in the Citadel, visible through the cracked crystal, was the most powerful Time Lord of all._

_Lady President Romana._

_She was standing in a room of stone and metal, where many branching corridors met by the cross-shaped box of the Cruciform. (The Emperor stared at it greedily.) She was whispering into the ear of a Time Lord the Emperor didn't recognise. He was young, with a strong square face, and a darkness in his eyes that had nothing to do with their pale blue colour. The fifty red and white armoured Chancellery Guards in the room were keeping their distance in obvious terror of him._

_The Emperor knew of only one Time Lord who could provoke such terror among his own race._

_The Master._

_But what were Romana and the Master doing deep in whispered conversation? Surely, they should be deadly enemies? Full of suspicion, the Emperor focused on the Master's face, and read his lips._

_"I'm perfect?" the Master was saying. "Romana, my dear. You've finally worked it out!" He threw back his head and laughed, then broke off as he caught sight of the Daleks overhead. His grin, already broad, became manic._

_The guards followed his gaze up, and even the Emperor could hear their fearful chatter. They raised their staser weapons, but they couldn't fire. The crystal dome of the Citadel was in the way._

_Romana looked up too. Alarmed, she grabbed the Master by both shoulders, brought her lips close to his ear where they couldn't be seen, and whispered._

_One of the Master's eyebrows rose in an elegant expression of surprise._

_Then Romana pulled away, waiting for the Master's response._

_The renegade Time Lord frowned. "You demand so much already. What if I refuse?" he asked, giving the guards a sidelong glance._

_Romana said nothing. She stared into his eyes._

_The Master muttered something to himself. The Emperor's memory swirled around this point. He had spent years replaying this moment, trying to read the Master's lips. He thought he had deciphered them at last._

_"Women, they get me every time." The Master shook his head, and sighed. Then he seemed to soften. "Very well, my dear. Seeing as I AM perfect." He leaned forward, and gave her a kiss on the lips. Her eyes widened, but she didn't pull away. He smiled at her with apparent affection. Then in one swift movement, he pulled a device the Emperor recognised as a laser screwdriver out of his jacket pocket, and shot her twice, once into each heart._

_At the sound of the shots, the guards tore their gazes away from the Daleks, and cried out in horror. But it was too late._

_Romana's eyes widened one more time, and then froze. Very gently, she fell forward. The Master caught her, and held her body in front of himself as a shield, sneering at the guards, who were shouting and scrambling to aim their staser weapons at him. He pointed his laser screwdriver back at them, but he was vastly outnumbered._

_The Dalek Emperor took advantage of the distraction. "Exterminate the guards," he ordered. "But leave the Master alive." He wanted to find out what the renegade Time Lord was doing there._

_With pleasure, he watched the nearest fifty Daleks break formation, and swoop down through the crack into the Citadel. The battle was short. A few bursts of laser fire, and all the guards were dead, sprawled where they had fallen._

_Only the Master was still standing. He let Romana's body fall to the floor with casual indifference, and looked up, grinning, as the Emperor lowered his ponderous bronze casing through the crack in the crystal, and came to a landing beside the Cruciform._

_"Emperor," said the Master jauntily. "Fancy meeting you here."_

_The Emperor didn't bother with greetings. "You have exterminated Lady President Romana," he said._

_The Master shrugged. "Naturally. She ordered my execution." His pale eyes blazed. "Which YOU carried out."_

_"The Act of Master Restitution was part of the peace treaty between the Daleks, and the Time Lords. That treaty is now over. Exterminating you would be counterproductive," said the Emperor._

_"Yes, I make your lives easier," said the Master._

_"You exterminate inferior beings."_

_"Saving you the trouble," the Master finished for him. He flipped his laser screwdriver into the air, caught it, and pushed it into his jacket pocket. His unsettling grin was back. "Do you want to know why Romana resurrected me?"_

_"Yes," said the Emperor. The fifty Daleks who had attacked the guards were now hovering in mathematically precise formation around him. The rest hovered outside, watching through the crystal._

_The Master seemed to be enjoying their attention. He leaned in toward the Emperor. "I'm the perfect warrior," he said, his voice dripping with contempt. "I was resurrected to beat the Daleks at their own game. To save the Time Lords from the worst annihilation they will face in the entire history of time itself."_

_"You are an enemy of the Daleks?" The Emperor's voice rose to a frantic screech. Thousands of Daleks twitched their gun sticks._

_"Calm yourselves, I haven't finished yet," the Master scolded them. "Romana knew you planned to enter the Cruciform, and corrupt the minds of every Time Lord. But what she didn't know was that I told you what the Cruciform was, and where to find it."_

_"That is true," said the Emperor. Some of the hysteria had left his voice._

_"You certainly took your time in getting here," said the Master, with a smirk. "I told you about the Cruciform years ago. Did you have more important things to exterminate?"_

_"There were eight decoy planets," the Emperor admitted. Only the Master could make him feel insufficiently destructive. The creature was an inspiration._

_It was why he kept him alive._

_But he was also insufferably rude. "So the Time Lords tricked you eight times! How embarrassing! You poor thing!" said the Master, shaking his head in mock sympathy._

_"Do not patronise me!" The Emperor was furious. Inspiration or not, there was a limit to how much he would tolerate. "I will enter the Cruciform. I will control your mind!"_

_"Ha! I look forward to seeing you try," said the Master, baring his teeth in a snarl. "And I long to see you take control of the Time Lords. Those snotty, stuck-up disgraces!" He gestured invitingly towards the Cruciform. "I was put here to stop you, but please, be my guest."_

_"You are far too keen to bring about your own destruction!" The Emperor's voice rose again. He could sense an undercurrent of emotion in the Master, but was it fear? Joy? The ambiguity made the Emperor uneasy at a time when he should have been celebrating. Here he was, beside the Cruciform, about to claim victory over the only race that stood between the Daleks, and absolute dominion over the rest of the universe. But he was also exactly where the Master wanted him to be, and that filled his mind with doubt and questions._

_Could the Master be trusted? No, of course not. Had the Master helped the Daleks exterminate other races before? Yes, though the Doctor had sabotaged their plan. Was the Master insane enough to betray his entire race, and laugh as they died? Without a doubt, yes. Over the centuries, he'd exterminated and enslaved his way into infamy among his fellow Time Lords. He'd assassinated his own President._

_The Emperor glanced down at Romana's body, and was horrified to see the dusty golden glow of regeneration rising from her still form. The bodies of the guards were glowing too. Time Lords had a terrifying habit of not staying dead. Shortly after extermination, they would be back on their feet, regenerated, ready to fight, but now full of cellular energy that could repair most injuries. The fifty guards wouldn't be so easy to kill this time. And if they were killed, they would simply regenerate again, and again._

_As he watched the guards stirring back into life, the Emperor heard thunderous footsteps approaching down all the corridors leading to the Cruciform._

_"That sounds like the heavy guards," said the Master. He eyed the nearest corridors, and took several steps backwards._

_Hundreds more Chancellory Guards flooded into the room. They wore faceplates, and much thicker armour than the fifty who were regenerating. Their weapons were massive time cannons. They fired at the nearest Daleks, who aged a thousand years instantly, and fell to dust._

_"I was right," said the Master, ducking down between the Emperor's casing, and the Cruciform. "Now we're in trouble." He took out his laser screwdriver, and started dodging around the Emperor, shooting at the guards._

_"Orders, Emperor. Give us orders," the Daleks wailed. Their lasers weren't penetrating the guards' armour. Another twenty Daleks exploded into dust, even as they spoke._

_"Shield me," ordered the Emperor. He realised that the Master was right. He was in trouble. Though he had come with thousands of Daleks, most of them were outside firing uselessly at the crystal. Only fifty could enter at a time, and they were being shot down as fast as they entered. The few that were already inside were dying fast._

_"Do it," the Master shouted above the roar of time cannons._

_"What?" The Emperor was calculating his chances of flying up through the crack without being shot. He had no chance, he realised._

_"Enter the Cruciform. Take control of the guards' minds before we're both shot."_

_Lack of trust in the Master made the Emperor hesitate. Another ten Daleks exploded. There were very few left between himself, and the time cannons now. Even as he watched, he saw the fifty regenerated guards getting up, and readying their staser weapons to fire. One took aim at him, and the Master blasted him off his feet._

_Was Romana armed? The Emperor glanced at her body, and saw that her golden glow was fading, and her appearance hadn't changed. "Romana hasn't regenerated," he said, barely believing his eye stick._

_"She's dead," Master snarled. He was pressing back against the Cruciform, taking cover from the majority of the guards, and shooting as many as he could. "I destroyed her hearts. She can't regenerate without them. Hurry up, and enter the blasted Cruciform!"_

_Hearing that Romana was dead, and knowing the Master was responsible, was just enough to make the Emperor obey. He still didn't trust him, but he had no choice. As the heavy guard approached him with time cannons raised, he whirled his heavy casing around, dodged past the Master, and pressed his plunger arm against the cross-shaped box._

_He entered the Cruciform._

_And, by the Void, wasn't it as incredible as the Master had promised him years ago? All his doubt and dread dropped away as his mind expanded. He could see through the guards' eyes, feel their emotions, read their minds, turn them into copies of himself, and CONTROL them._

_The guards screamed, clutched at their heads, and dropped their weapons. They fell to the floor, and lay convulsing. They weren't the only ones. The Emperor could feel his influence spreading out from the Cruciform to encompass every Time Lord and Lady on Gallifrey._

_The High Council was meeting in the Panopticon, the cavernous hall in the centre of the Citadel. The Emperor tore through the minds of a thousand skull capped, and collared elected officials at once. Through their own eyes, he watched them stiffen. Some cried out. Then they staggered, and fell. As they writhed on the floor, the Emperor heard his own triumphant laughter echoing from a thousand throats._

_The entire High Council was under his control. The Chancellor. The Castellan. Every single Cardinal and Councillor._

_But he had only just begun. Lying on a pallet beside the genetic loom that had just resurrected him, the Emperor found his greatest victim of all._

_Rassilon. The inventor of every piece of Time Lord technology, from time travelling vehicles to regeneration. The warrior who had fought the Great Vampires. The ultimate xenophobic, who had seeded the galaxy with molecules that forced all the other races to evolve in his own image. His willingness to dominate made him fall under the Emperor's control faster than any other Time Lord had so far._

_Emboldened by his success, the Emperor let his attention spread out to distant parts of Gallifrey. In the burning landscape, he saw kindly Time Lords and Ladies helping the millions of refugee Gallifreyans. In bomb shelters, caves, and catacombs, anywhere that gave shelter from the fires ravaging the planet, they gave out food, medical aid, and soothing words._

_But then the Emperor entered their minds. These are inferior beings, he informed them. Hunter-gatherers, inhabitants of the wastelands, simple villagers. You who have gone through so many physical modifications, and a century of training at the Academy are superior to ordinary Gallifreyans. Carry out your directive, and exterminate them._

_A new war began, and the Emperor watched with delight. Bows and arrows against staser weapons, but only if the unaltered Gallifreyans were lucky. Most of them were unarmed, having escaped from their burning villages with only the clothes on their backs. They were helpless against Time Lords with Dalek minds._

_Now only those who lacked a full connection to the Cruciform remained free of the Emperor's influence. Criminals and renegades who hid their true names behind titles. Yet even they had been called back to Gallifrey to fight. The Emperor counted off their titles, as he possessed their minds: The Rani, The Monk, The War Chief..._

_The Doctor. With a thrill of fear, the Emperor recognised the Oncoming Storm, the Daleks' most feared enemy. In the higher dimensions, his mind was visible from far away as a towering, billowing cumulonimbus of fate, lit up from the inside with flashes of psychic lightning. The TARDIS had materialised in orbit around Gallifrey, and the Emperor could feel the Doctor's absolute horror at what his people had become._

_Summoning all the power of the Cruciform, the Emperor prepared to convert his greatest enemy. But inside his casing, he was trembling. How many centuries had the Doctor spent fighting him, and all that he represented? If anyone could resist the mind of a Dalek, it would be the Oncoming Storm._

_So the Emperor wasted no time. He looked out of the Doctor's eyes, and saw pale hands resting on the console, the sleeves of a dapper suit, and the TARDIS's time rotor rising, and falling. He melded their minds together, and force-fed him the traits that formed the Dalek psyche. An unquestioning belief in his obvious technical, physical, and mental superiority. A constant striving to better himself. These traits were already present in the Doctor's mind, and they paved the way for what the Emperor considered to be their logical conclusion. Murderous hatred of all those who were inferior._

_The hands on the console balled into fists, and the Emperor was sickened by memories of humans laced with love. They are stupid apes, he argued back, reaching into the Doctor's memory, and showing him countless examples of human stupidity, and helplessness. How many times have you had to save them? Inferior beings that cannot even sense the Time Vortex deserve only extermination._

_Hatred flooded the Doctor's mind, and the Emperor felt victorious, but also afraid. The famous Time Lord pacifist was consumed with a merciless urge to exterminate him. As a Dalek, the Doctor showed promise. But there was one more trait he required._

_Marshalling all the powers of the Cruciform, the Emperor forced a command into the Doctor's head. Obey. I am your superior. You will not question or harm me._

_The floor of the TARDIS came up to meet the Doctor very suddenly. His lips formed the words, "I obey." But no sound escaped. With clenched teeth, he thrashed on the floor, fighting for control of his body, and mind._

_It's no use, the Emperor told him. You cannot uncouple yourself from the Cruciform. Fight me for as long as you want, I will still be inside your mind. You are mine. I control you. Listen, that is the Cloister Bell tolling. Even your TARDIS knows._

_The Emperor commanded armies of millions. He'd destroyed civilisations by the thousand. But no victory had ever brought him so much pleasure as watching the Doctor struggle. He laughed, and felt every Time Lord and Lady echo him. This was glorious. It was perfect. With the Time Lords vanquished, there was no one left to stand between the Daleks, and absolute domination of the universe..._

_"Aren't you forgetting someone?"_

_A sardonic voice, and a swimming sensation of darkness shocked the Emperor into silence. Two overlapping images filled his vision._

_One was the Master. He was leaning back against the Cruciform, scribbling idly on the palms of his hands with his laser screwdriver on lowest setting. Though his home was in ruins, and his people dead, regenerating or worse, he looked elegant, and bored._

_The other image was something that the Emperor had never seen before: a bloated bronze pepper pot. As he watched, it twitched in an agitated manner, and waved its stubby gun stick threateningly. It was a Dalek. But one he didn't recognise._

_How dare such a large, and ugly Dalek creep up on him without identifying itself? Why hadn't his Daleks, now back in formation around him, alerted him to this intruder?_

_He aimed his gun stick, but then stopped in a hurry when he realised he was looking at himself through the Master's eyes. He had come full circle. The last Time Lord whose mind he had invaded was also the one standing closest to him._

_And he was also the Time Lord whose mind was most like his. It was like being in two places at once. Data from the senses, thoughts, and memories mingled, to the Emperor's utter confusion. He stared at the unfamiliar view of himself from the outside, and a thought crept through his mind._

_This casing makes me look fat._

_He was instantly suspicious that the thought wasn't his. Especially when it got worse._

_Look at me. I'm such a fat, ugly Dalek. Fat, ugly, and stupid. A stupid puppet Emperor. I should remove my propulsion system altogether, and just be a stationary blob in the corner._

_"Master!" The Emperor screeched. "You will stop thinking those thoughts about me, or face immediate extermination!"_

_"It's not me, it's you. You hate yourself," said the Master. He looked more bored than ever, but also a little smug._

_"I do not hate myself. You are putting thoughts into my mind!"_

_"Prove it," the Master challenged him._

_"Daleks are not concerned with adipose tissue. I do not care that I look fat."_

_"So you DO think you look fat." Now the Master was grinning._

_"It is unimportant," said the Emperor. He focused on the Master to see if the thoughts would change, and found that they did right away._

_Look at that suit! What style! Oh, he's gorgeous! Brilliant, cunning, and sex on legs. The entire universe REVOLVES around him._

_"Why thank you!" said the Master, preening himself._

_"Those are definitely your thoughts," said the Emperor sourly. He could sense the other Time Lords, still convulsing or fully subsumed into the Dalek mindset, and hunting down ordinary Gallifreyans. The difference between them, and the Master's urbane ennui was stark. "I am in your mind. Why aren't you affected?" he wondered aloud._

_The Master switched off his laser screwdriver, and stuck it back into his jacket pocket. "I'm barely connected to the Cruciform. That's my punishment," he said. "But mainly I'm unaffected because..." He leaned forward, and the Emperor was struck speechless by the cold darkness in his eyes. "I was worse than you when I was eight years old."_

_"That is impossible," said the Emperor. It took him a couple of goes to get the words out._

_"You're so naive," the Master smiled. "You gave every Time Lord a Dalek mind. You thought that would make us your allies. Your friends." He drew the word out mockingly. "Did you think we'd hold your gun stick afterwards, and go skipping away with you to conquer the universe?" He laughed. "You thought the Time Lords were the only race equal to the Daleks. But you're wrong about that. We're not your equals."_

_A swirling darkness was growing in the Emperor's mind._

_"We're SO much worse," the Master said._

_The Emperor flinched at the monstrous images being forced into his head. The Daleks around him read his thoughts through their mental link, and scooted backwards._

_"They that walk in the shadows. That's what Gallifrey means," the Master continued. "Did you ever wonder why the Time Lords chose that name? Did you ever wonder why they were such a bunch of snotty, stuck-up, pompous cowards, afraid of having fun, and afraid of breaking their own rules?" His smile was demonic. "They knew what they were capable of, and it frightened them. There are terrors hidden on this planet far beyond anything a Dalek could ever imagine. Ten million years of weaponry that the Time Lords were too moral," he sneered at the word. "To use. But not any more, thanks to you! The Daleks are only capable of extinguishing all the other lifeforms in the universe. The Time Lords can extinguish time itself! You haven't ended the Time War by entering the Cruciform. You've turned it into Hell!"_

_Not far away, in the Panopticon, the Emperor sensed through the Cruciform that the High Council were getting to their feet, and straightening their robes. Their poise, and noble bearing had returned._

_But now they were insane._

_With a chilling clarity of purpose, the wheels of the universe's most ancient democracy began turning again. There was a war to be won. Sacrifices had to be made. Representatives were chosen to wake the weapons that had been held in storage for millennia. With a mysterious sense of creeping horror, Emperor sensed their names: the Nightmare Child, the Hordes of Travesty, the Army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres. But what they actually did eluded him. He wasn't sure if his sanity would survive the knowledge._

_Rassilon stormed into the Panopticon, and was immediately elected Lord President. The Time Lords were committed to winning the war, and nothing would stop them._

_Orbiting far above the Citadel, the Emperor sensed that the Doctor was making plans of his own. His people were contaminated beyond recognition. They had to be exterminated, and the Daleks too. The two mightiest civilisations in the universe would burn. It didn't even occur to him to question his own ruthlessness._

_I've made the perfect Dalek out of the Doctor, the Emperor thought. He could see the Chancellory Guards getting back to their feet, and he wasn't sure if he could control them any more. It was time to go. He released the Cruciform, and turned to face the Master one last time. The guards had all heard him gloating, and he doubted that they would let him live._

_But the Master had gone._

_He didn't believe it at first. He'd been distracted by the horrors that the High Council was preparing for him, and he hadn't been keeping track of the renegade. Was he somewhere in the room? He swivelled his eye stick, but the Master was nowhere to be seen. So he reached out with his mind._

_The Master was running, as fast as any Time Lord ever had._

_The coward, the Emperor thought. But it was time he ran too. "Retreat," he ordered. It was a word he had almost never uttered. He lifted off, his Daleks rising with him, shielding him from the guards, and rose out of the crack without much room to spare. Fat, the thought crept unbidden through his mind again. So fat I should remove my propulsion system, and give up moving altogether. He didn't know if the thought was his, or whether the Master had implanted it, but it seemed to be here to stay._

_As he rose high above the Citadel, his Daleks in formation around him, he caught sight of the Master. The renegade had squeezed through the bottom of the crack, and had run across the short red lawn between the Citadel, and the crashed Dalek flying saucers. He was at that moment climbing into a saucer that seemed mostly intact. The Emperor wasn't the only one who had spotted him. A shout came from the Citadel. The heavy guards were standing by the crack, and pointing. One of them fired their time cannon, and it struck the Master full in the back._

_He tumbled out of sight for a moment, and then rose up slowly, now a white haired old man. His youth and strength had been blasted away. But the darkness in his eyes was, if anything, even more pronounced. He shot the guard dead, and then he aimed a beam of energy from his laser screwdriver into the flying saucer. Its engine cranked into life, and it blasted off into the sky, narrowly missing the Emperor and his entourage._

_"Follow him!" the Emperor screeched. It was beyond mere casings to keep up with a full-sized Dalek vessel. He maintained his trajectory back to his flagship, and mentally ordered his flying saucers that were still orbiting Gallifrey to continue the chase. Even without his connection to his troops, he could make out the Master's progress through his fleet by the massive explosions, visible from orbit. Could a pocket-sized laser screwdriver really do so much damage? He would torture the secret of creating laser screwdrivers out of the Master when he caught him. It would be a fitting repayment._

_The journey back to his flagship seemed far too long. His second-in-command was waiting for him as he glided into the bridge._

_"Report."_

_"Emperor, the Time Lords appear to be preparing a weapon. There is an area of darkness to the east of the Citadel that our scanners cannot penetrate."_

_"It is the Nightmare Child," said the Emperor, shuddering inside his casing. Every instinct shouted at him to flee this world, and never look back. But Daleks did not flee. They destroyed and rejoiced. If the Time Lords were preparing mind-twisting horrors, the Daleks would have to do the same. "What of the Master?" he asked._

_"He has escaped."_

_"WHAT?" The Emperor whirled around._

_His second-in-command backed away. "The Master destroyed every ship we sent after him. Fifty-four. That is more in a few rels than his entire race ever managed in a day."_

_"You let him escape?"_

_"We tracked him. He has travelled to the year a hundred trillion. Dalek technology will not function there."_

_"Turn on the long range scanners!" the Emperor's voice rose in fury. "Find the Master at once!"_

_The image through the scanners was dark and blurry. Dalek technology, indeed, didn't function properly so far in the future. But it was enough for the Emperor to make out the Master, climbing out of the crashed flying saucer. It was long past flying now, a smoking wreck pockmarked with laser burns. Unless the Master found another vessel, the Emperor thought, he was stranded for good._

_The Master himself was a wreck. His body was stiff and elderly now, and he kept having to stop to catch his breath. When he finally reached the ground, he sank down, and rested._

_He was on the planet Malcassairo, but it was a far cry from the warm bright planet of the past. It was a bleak wasteland without stars or sunlight, for the stars had long since burned out. But it wasn't uninhabited. The saucer had crashed on a ridge. At the bottom of the valley, an enclosure ringed with wire fencing had been set up, and campfires burned inside the perimeter. A line of torches was heading in his direction. They'd seen the flying saucer crash, and were coming to investigate._

_The Master took out his laser screwdriver. He tried to activate it, and failed. He shook it, peered at it, and finally made it glow. Then he carefully removed a silver fob watch, engraved with an intricate pattern of circles, and lines, from of his pocket. He applied the laser screwdriver to the watch, pressed the watch to his head, and the endless night was rent by his scream of agony._

_A chameleon arch the Emperor thought, though a very makeshift version. So the Master intends to hide from me by becoming human, or is he hiding from his own race? Whatever the reason, his degradation is now complete. The Emperor watched the Master's features blur, then reappear exactly the same as before._

_With a bright red flash, the laser screwdriver exploded. Its shattered pieces flew away into the night, and its owner collapsed unconscious to the ground. When he stirred, and pulled himself into a sitting position a short time later, there was an uncertainty to his movements that hadn't been there before. The darkness was gone from his eyes._

_Slowly and painfully, rubbing his head as though he had a severe headache but wasn't quite sure why, he got to his feet, and stood there panting. Something about his bearing suggested he was altogether a softer, kinder person than he had been as a Time Lord._

_The Emperor disliked the human Master immediately._

_Something snarled in the darkness behind the crashed saucer. The Master turned his head, his confusion becoming fear._

_A tall humanoid figure appeared out of the darkness. Clothed in black rags, with piercings and geometric black tattoos covering his face, he seemed more animal than human, and his sharpened fangs confirmed it. He snarled._

_"Hullo?" the Master quavered._

_The animal man didn't reply. It wasn't even clear if he could talk. But a nasty grin spread over his face. It was obvious that he thought that this old man wouldn't put up too much of a fight. He took a step towards the Master._

_The Master took a step back. "Can I help you with anything?" he asked. His voice shook._

_The animal man took another step forward. He licked his lips._

_"Really, I'd be more useful alive, than dead. I'd be very tough to eat. Even your t-t-teeth couldn't cope." The Master's teeth were chattering with terror._

_The torches were getting close now. Loud human voices could be heard. A bullet zinged over the animal man's head. He ducked, turned to face the torches, and snarled his frustration. Then he sprinted off into the night._

_Blinking in the light of the torches, like a bewildered elderly owl, the Master watched a group of twenty humans approach him. They were better dressed than the animal man, but not by much._

_A tall human, bulky with armour, walked up to him and pointed a gun in his face. "Show me your teeth," he demanded._

_"My teeth?" The Master was puzzled. "Oh, do you mean, do I have fangs like that other gentleman, if that's the right word."_

_"Open your mouth."_

_The muzzle of the gun bent the tip of the Master's nose. He drew back his lips, and showed his teeth._

_The man stared, then his shoulders relaxed. "He's human," he called out._

_Sighs of relief, and chatter could be heard all around. The humans came closer to look at their newest arrival._

_"Is this how you came here?" The armoured man gestured with his gun to the flying saucer._

_The Master stared at it, and rubbed his head. "I"m afraid I don't remember," he said. "It's all rather a blur. I remember refugee ships, and the Silver Devastation." He shook his head as if trying to dislodge something. "Can you hear drums beating?"_

_The armoured man looked concerned. "You must have a concussion. We don't have a medic, but we do have a scientist who might be able to help. Chantho!" he called out._

_"Chan - Yes? - Tho." A blue humanoid insect, a Malmooth, approached. Mandibles wriggled by the sides of her jaw, but she seemed a harmless, friendly creature._

_"You need to take a look at," the armoured man paused. "What's your name?"_

_This question caught the Master completely off guard. He didn't have an answer. Embarrassed, he looked around at random, glancing at the crashed flying saucer as if that would give him a hint. Then he caught sight of the doodles on the palms of his hands._

_On his left hand were the letters I and X. The Emperor stared hard at them through the scanner, but they meant nothing to him. Written on his right hand was a name._

_"Professor Yana," the Master read out._

_"Chan - A professor? You are a scientist too? - Tho." The blue insect was beaming._

_The Master considered this, and started to smile. "Why, yes. I believe I must be," he said._

_"Chan - What have you studied? - Tho."_

_The Master's eyes rolled skywards in thought, and his smile broadened. "Practically everything," he said. It seemed that a few things were coming back to him, not in the least that he was highly intelligent, and well educated._

_Ah, Master, the Emperor thought. The Chameleon Arch didn't get all of you. You're still a vain arrogant creature._

_But the insect was amused. "Chan - Just what we need! - Tho," she said, and laughed, obviously liking him instantly._

_"Emperor, something is rising from the darkness near the Citadel." The second-in-command's voice cut in over the scene._

_"The Nightmare Child?" Panic crept into the Emperor's electronic voice. He hadn't expected that monstrosity so soon. There were more important things to deal with right now than human Time Lords trapped in the far future._

_"Shall we go after the Master?" The second-in-command was hopeful. Even going to the year a hundred trillion was preferable to facing the horror that was coming straight for them._

_The Emperor didn't reply. He stared at the Master, who took a silvery square of cloth out of his pocket, stared at it as though it were vaguely familiar, then shrugged and blew his nose on it._

_Full of suspicion, the Emperor focused the scanner on the cloth, but he could see nothing special about it. He made his decision, one that would haunt him for years afterwards._

_"No. I am satisfied that fear made him run. He crawled with cowardice into the future, to degrade himself as a miserable human, and grovel with inferior races while the universe dies. My revenge will keep until his race are all exterminated." The Emperor flicked off the scanner, and turned to face the bridge windows._

_An enormous black shape was flying up towards the flagship…_

oOoOoOo

The sheer Lovecraftian horror of the Nightmare Child made Quick yank her mind out of the Emperor's. She couldn't have stopped herself if she tried. It was a reflex response, like snatching fingers away from a hot stove. Ye Gods, how had he survived seeing that thing up close, let alone fighting it?

She had distracted the Dalek Emperor, as Ood Sigma had asked, but would it be enough? Had he, and the other Ood taken control of the central reactor?

It seemed like they had. The circular room in the Dalek flying saucer was on fire. Explosions had torn smoking holes in the floor, but worst of all was the hole blasted into the ceiling. The stars of space could be seen beyond, and the room was outgassing, sucking everything that wasn't welded to the floor out into the airless void.

Quick grabbed hold of a computer terminal, and hung on. Screeching Daleks somersaulted past her, and through the hole. Another explosion rocked the flying saucer, and made her lose her grip. The escaping air dragged her along the floor, but she managed to grasp a floor grill.

In front of her, the Dalek Emperor shrieked. The latest explosion had dislodged his casing from the floor, and he rose up, with cables snapping everywhere, and tumbled out into space. By now, he must have been regretting removing his propulsion system.

Quick realised she was going to follow him to her death. She couldn't hang on any longer, and the loss of air pressure was making her feel faint. She saw her fingers loosening on the grill, and closed her eyes.

oOoOoOo

**_Author Note:_**_ For a picture of how the Master looks in this chapter, Google pictures of a young Derek Jacobi._


	7. Chapter 7: Four Words

**Chapter 7: Four Words**

Just as her fingers released, Quick felt a cold hand close over her wrist.

"Got you!"

She opened her eyes to see the Doctor's grin. Her Doctor, with his bow tie, and floppy hair flailing in the rush of air. He was dangling from the floor grill by his left arm.

She grabbed hold of him. The escaping air pulled their feet towards the ceiling.

"I put a thirty second delay on the emergency forcefield," the Doctor shouted over the howling gale. "It should have sealed the hull the second it was breached. But I thought a delay would get rid of unwelcome company."

"The Daleks, or me?" she shouted back, with a grin, marvelling at the way he was able to hold on one-handed without any sign of strain. "I had no idea you were so strong."

"Academy weight-lifting champion, five times," said the Doctor modestly. He did a few one-armed pull ups. Though as his feet were in the air, they were more like pull downs.

"Very nice," she said, wondering how much longer she could hold on.

"That was nothing," said the Doctor, warming to the subject. "I could bench press twenty times my own weight in triple gravity. Of course, my right arm was always the stronger one." He reached his right arm towards the grill.

Horrified, Quick saw his left hand loosen. "Wait!" she shouted. "Don't let go!"

But it was too late. Both of them went flying up towards the hole in the ceiling. Quick screamed.

Then the rush of air cut off. A glassy forcefield had materialised over the breach in the hull. Instead of being pulled into space, they bounced back down to the floor.

"Ouch!" said the Doctor. Quick had landed on top of him.

"For a weight lifting champion, you make a good landing mat, Doctor," she said, and laughed. Then she groaned, rolled off him, and lay on the floor on her back. Black spots were dancing before her eyes. She took big lungfuls of the air rushing in to restore the pressure. True, the new air smelt of chemical fires. But at least it wasn't trying to drag her into space.

The Doctor leaped to his feet. He wasn't even out of breath. "We've got to get out of here. Those explosions were just the sub-reactors. The Ood have control of the main reactor now. This whole ship is going to blow up."

Quick struggled to her feet. Every part of her body, and mind seemed to hurt. "How do we get out of here?" she asked.

"I can program the teleport to put us back where it found us," said the Doctor. He aimed his sonic screwdriver at the bank of computers next to the teleport pad.

Lights flashed. But Quick glanced at the Cruciform.

"What about the Ood?" she asked. "How do they get home?"

The Doctor glanced over his shoulder at the huge cross-shaped box. His expression was grim. Without a word, he turned back, and kept working on the teleport. Quick's stomach flipped over.

"No," she said. "We can't just leave them here."

"It took the Daleks a month to teleport all the Ood. We have two minutes," said the Doctor. He didn't meet her gaze.

She sprinted over to the Cruciform. The song of the Ood was in her head, and it cut her to the heart. "I'm so sorry," she began.

Then she stopped. Ood Sigma's translucent form had reappeared in front of her. "Goodbye, Dr Quick," he said.

"This isn't right." She could feel tears rising. "There must be a way we can take you with us." Could she scoop as many brains as she could carry out of the Cruciform? Wouldn't that kill them just as surely as an explosion?

"We don't have much time. I have some information to give to you, and it must be kept secret." Ood Sigma's voice was calm. "The Dalek Emperor created a Cruciform to read the deep patterns of the Time Vortex. This he has achieved, but we will be the ones who will benefit."

"I'm listening," she said, feeling wracked with guilt.

Ood Sigma's eyes glowed red. She knew what that meant. He was connecting telepathically to something much bigger than himself. On Ood Sphere, it had been the Brain. Here, she guessed it must be the Cruciform.

"Tell no one about what you see on his mantlepiece," he said.

She was taken aback. "What?"

"There are treasures there beyond price. But no one alive knows of their existence. They are listening. Always listening. Every sound is tracked. It is important that you do not speak of the treasures. Do not even tell the Doctor."

"I won't tell," she said, wondering if the agony of being put into the Cruciform had turned Ood Sigma's mind. He wasn't making any sense.

"And do not speak the four words."

"What four words?" she asked, feeling more confused than ever.

"You will know them when you come to speak them. Again, they must be kept secret at all costs."

"How long must I keep the four words secret?"

Ood Sigma paused. He seemed to be listening to something only he could hear. "When Gallifrey rises in the sky again," he said. "Then the four words can be safely spoken."

The whole saucer began to shake. Ood Sigma blinked, and the redness in his eyes faded. "And now you must go," he said.

"No," she said.

"It is beginning. The main reactor is breaking up."

"Can't you stop it?" She didn't care if the question was ridiculous.

"I cannot. This ship will explode in less than thirty seconds. It is full of Dalek technology. It is better that it is destroyed."

"Quick! I've reset the teleport!" The Doctor called out from across the room. The rumbling below their feet was increasing.

She glanced over her shoulder. The Doctor was beckoning frantically. But she turned back to Ood Sigma. "Can the Cruciform tell you how we can save you?" she asked.

"You, and the Doctor cannot save us," he replied. "But I would look at the Cruciform right now, if I were you." He pointed back towards the cross-shaped box with his gnarled right index finger.

Warily, she turned her head. Then a pair of cold arms caught her in a bear hug from behind, and she knew that she'd been distracted on purpose.

The Doctor dragged her backwards towards the teleport. Her last view of Ood Sigma, before the teleport energy washed her away, was the mischievous look in his eyes.

And then he was gone.

oOoOoOo

Voodrell Island on Ood Sphere was always freezing, especially just before dawn.

"I never say goodbye," said the Doctor, sticking his key into the TARDIS's lock. "Things to do. Places to go. Besides, the Ood Council should know by now that their problem is solved."

"Some solution," said Quick. The tears had frozen on her face. "All the kidnapped Ood are dead."

"We don't know that for sure," said the Doctor gently. He opened the TARDIS's doors, and light from the console room spilled out over the snow. "They were part of a Cruciform. Never underestimate a Cruciform. The Dalek Emperor did, and look what happened to him." He grinned, and yanked his key out of the lock. But when he turned, and saw her face, he sighed, and patted her shoulder.

"I saw Gallifrey," she told him.

The hand on her shoulder froze. "What?"

"In the Dalek Emperor's memories of the Last Great Time War. He flew down to enter the Cruciform, and saw the Master assassinate Lady President Romana, because she'd ordered the Daleks to execute _him_. Was he the same Master you mentioned back at Northwick?"

"There's only one Master. He killed Romana?" The Doctor had gone pale, and his voice was hollow.

"You knew her?"

He nodded, took his hand off her shoulder, and leant against the open doorway of the TARDIS, looking shaken.

"I'm sorry," said Quick. "If it's any consolation, she didn't suffer at all." She felt awkward, and wished she'd never said anything.

The Doctor stared blankly into space. "Revenge. That's just like him. But I was surprised at Romana for ordering his execution." He sighed. "It was the Master's last wish that I take his body home to Gallifrey. But he sabotaged the TARDIS! I should have known that even the Daleks couldn't kill him. The Master always protected his existence at all costs."

"Who is he?"

The Doctor frowned and said nothing. But in his head, she could see the image of two young friends running together on fields of red grass, before a red snow-topped mountain that twinkled in the light of twin suns. One of the boys was the Master. His real name was Koschei. The other was the Doctor, and his name was-

The Doctor whisked his name away before she could properly grasp it.

"Sorry," she said, feeling embarrassed. "I can't seem to turn my telepathy off."

"The Cruciform stretched your mind," said the Doctor. "It might snap back in time."

She could still see the mountain in his head, and also its name. "Mount Perdition?" she said before she could stop herself. "That means Hell. You mean to say the Master came from Hell?"

The Doctor looked annoyed. Then he shrugged. "It's just a name," he said. "But I think the Master would have said he came from Hell. His parents were very strict. The House of Oakdown had a long, noble tradition that he was expected to uphold at all costs. It was duty, duty all the time. He followed it, but he hated it."

"I'd say 'poor Master' if I hadn't see what he was like. Even the Dalek Emperor thought he was a monster."

"It wasn't his fault," said the Doctor.

"Don't defend him. Even if he had a really difficult childhood, it's no excuse for being a murderer."

"It wasn't his childhood. It was the Untempered Schism. He was never the same again," said the Doctor.

"What's the Untempered Schism?"

"Eternity! A gap in reality. You can see the whole Time Vortex through it. Every Time Lord looks into the Untempered Schism when they start at the Academy. I was eight years old, and so was the Master. I saw it just before he did." A reminiscent smile spread over the Doctor's face. "It was FANTASTIC. I saw everything that ever happened, or would happen in the universe. All I wanted to do was run off, and see it all. And I tried," his smile became cheeky. "My teacher, Borusa, caught me trying to steal a TARDIS just after the ceremony. I was in so much trouble."

"What about the Master?" she asked, trying not to focus too closely on the rush of images in his head. The Untempered Schism was far beyond anything a human mind could cope with.

The Doctor blinked. "What about him?" he asked. The rush of images in his mind ceased, and she was half relieved, half disappointed.

"Didn't he see the same things you did? So why does he want to destroy everything, when you just want to see everything?"

The Doctor looked thoughtful. "When I say we both saw the Time Vortex, it doesn't mean that we saw the same things," he said slowly. "There's an awful lot to the Time Vortex, and we were only children. We might have focused on different parts of it. In fact, I'm certain that we did."

"What parts did the Master see?"

"I don't know." The Doctor's brows knitted into an uneasy frown. "Borusa gave me three days detention for trying to steal that TARDIS. When I got out, and found the Master, all I could talk about was what I had seen, and invite him to come and see it with me. He promised to come, and it never even occurred to me to ask him what HE'D seen in the Untempered Schism. Bit self-centred of me, really."

"You were only eight," said Quick.

"I asked the Master what he'd seen, years later, long after everything had started going wrong with him," said the Doctor. "But he wouldn't tell me. We weren't friends by then." He sighed. "I didn't see it, because I ran off. But they say that the Master never uttered a sound when he looked into the Untempered Schism. Most of the initiates screamed or laughed." He grinned. "I did both at the same time." His face sobered up. "But the Master just stood there, all silent and thoughtful. Then he nodded, put his hands behind his back, and walked away, like a little adult. The Rani saw him do it, and she said it was downright spooky. He didn't say a word for three days afterwards. I didn't even know, when I got out of detention. I just went up to him, and started talking. And he talked back. He seemed like the same person. Good old dutiful Koschei. But as it turned out, he wasn't Koschei any more."

"Why don't you ask the Master again what he saw?" asked Quick.

The Doctor shook his head. "I can't. He's dead."

She was surprised. "Are you sure?" she asked. "You said he protected his existence at all costs."

"Not this time. I saw him die," said the Doctor. "He gave his life for mine."

Quick thought she must have looked doubtful, because he added quickly.

"All right, he had other reasons. Revenge, for instance. But he poured out the last of his life force to stop Rassilon from killing me, and he didn't have to do it. He was drawn back into the last day of the Time War, with the other Time Lords, and Ladies. The Master's dead. They're all dead. I ... killed them."

His pain and guilt were so powerful that she doubted he'd even be speaking about them, if she couldn't already see them in his mind. "You did the right thing," she said.

"How can you say that?" the Doctor raised his voice. "I committed genocide. I killed all of my family, and all of my friends."

"The Dalek Emperor turned them into monsters, I saw it. All of them, but Romana."

A flicker of hope entered the Doctor's eyes. But it died almost immediately. "The Master killed her before the Dalek Emperor entered the Cruciform, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"Then she's the only one of my people who hasn't got Dalek in any part of her Time Line. But that won't do her or anyone else any good. She's dead." He broke off, shaking his head. "What a day this has turned out to be! I've had enough! I need a holiday."

"Sounds like a brilliant idea," said Quick.

"Where do you want to go? Any time, or place. Just name it." The excited sparkle was coming back into the Doctor's eyes.

She hugged herself, and stamped her feet in the snow. "How about somewhere a bit more tropical?" she suggested.

"I can do that." Now the Doctor was grinning in earnest. He offered his arm. "How does the Mesozoic sound?"

"With all those Tyrannosauruses roaming about? That wouldn't be a very restful," she teased, taking his arm.

"Or Arcadia? There's a beach there that's a thousand kilometres long, made of diamonds instead of sand." He led her into the TARDIS.

"Will they stick to my towel like regular sand?" she asked, with a grin.

"If they don't, we can put glue on your towel," he said, his voice cutting off as he shut the doors.

The blue light on the TARDIS flashed, and the sound of an ancient grinding engine could be heard, before it faded away.

Behind the square depression in the snow left by the TARDIS, a cloud of glowing golden motes lingered. In the dawn light, they formed a shape something like a listening man. Then they too faded away.

oOoOoOo

**_Author Note_**_: Please review!_


	8. Chapter 8: Quick's Blog

_**Author Note:**_

__

Ever noticed how you live backwards through time, like the White Queen, when you're reading blogs? You start with the latest post, but as you read on into your future, the posts get older.

**Chapter 8: Quick's Blog**

_The TARDIS Has Crash Landed In Venice_

_Published by Dr Alice Quick on January 4, 2010. 2 minutes ago. 1 Comment._

That's not a beach on Alpha Centauri on the TARDIS's monitor screen. That's the Piazza San Marco in Venice. I can see the white arches of the Doge's Palace.

No people, though. How strange.

Sorry, I didn't finish my previous post on the Alpha Centaurians. While I was typing, something seemed to grab the TARDIS and shake her. I stumbled into the console, and my iPhone flew out of my hands and smashed against the wall. But I hardly noticed because I was hanging on for dear life. The Doctor was dashing about, yanking on levers and shouting that we were near a tremendous disturbance in the Time Vortex. He'd never seen anything as portentous in all of his lives.

The room started rippling, and the poor TARDIS's engines were screaming. I though she was going to be ripped apart and us along with her. The Doctor shouted that he was going to follow the disturbance down.

Then we rematerialised and hit the ground hard in Venice, of all places.

Something is terribly wrong with the TARDIS. I'm used to feeling her presence all around me. A kind of subliminal humming? I'm not sure, but I know that it's gone. The Doctor said passing through the disturbance in the Time Vortex damaged the TARDIS. He assured me all she needs is a rest and she'll fix herself in time. Then he gave her console a pat.

But he looks ill with worry and I'm concerned he'll start Yowling again at any moment. The TARDIS is more like a family member to him than a vehicle, and he's lost so many family members already.

The Doctor said he needed to make himself feel useful, so he picked up the pieces of my iPhone and put them back together with a few flashes of his sonic screwdriver. But he didn't give the phone back straight away.

No! First he had to launch into a rant about the general uselessness of Earth technology and iPhones in particular. If Steve Jobs had heard, he'd have died of shame.

Now I _know_ we're in trouble. The Doctor only starts putting down other races when he's frightened. You should have heard him rip into Ood architecture after he realised the name of one of their islands meant 'Bad Wolf'.

I challenged the Doctor to improve the iPhone, if it was so useless. I thought it would take his mind of the TARDIS, and it did seem to cheer him up. He started zapping the phone with his sonic screwdriver, and cackling to himself, then he gave it back to me with a flourish and proceeded to demonstrate the new apps he'd installed.

'Medical Scanner' is my favourite. Here's a video I took with it of my hand flexing, showing all the muscles, tendons and bones. The diagnosis is 'Heathy', which I knew anyway, but it's nice to have it confirmed. I asked him how he did it, and he said he modified the oscillations of the vibrating ring to act as an ultra sound, and added a database of medical information. I called him a genius, and he modestly dusted his fingernails on his lapel and said, "I know! But I never let it go to my head."

Time Lords and their egos! LOL!

'Teleport' is my second favourite new app. I haven't had a chance to try it out yet. The Doctor says it won't work inside the TARDIS. I can't teleport into the TARDIS from the outside either, she's shielded against that sort of thing.

The camera is also working again. Here's a photo of the monitor screen.

Have you ever seen a photo like it? Venice, the centre of Piazza San Marco, noon on a beautiful sunny day and _there's nobody around_. The square should be teeming with tourists. When the tourists leave, the residents come out and reclaim their city. They go to restaurants or simply sit around. You can see their cats sunning themselves on walls.

But there isn't so much as a pigeon outside right now. I don't like this at all. It's creepy. Has the disturbance in the Time Vortex somehow killed off every living thing in the city?

The instruments on the console have stopped working and the Doctor doesn't know when or where we are. Where we are seems obvious. But is it the present day? The Renaissance? Our best guess is that it's the year 1347, when half the population of Venice died of the plague and the rest went into hiding or ran away.

I'm keen to go out there, and help the plague victims. I don't need a medical kit - I've got apps for that now! But the Doctor has persuaded me to change into period costume first. Meanwhile, he says he's going to pop outside, and see if he can sniff what year it is.

Yes, he said sniff. Unless the Doctor was joking, Time Lords have a chronometer up their noses! I'm full of curiosity regarding Time Lord biology, but the Doctor gets all embarrassed, and coy when I ask questions, and he hid behind the console when I pointed my new Medical Scanner at his nose.

I won't press him for information if it makes him uncomfortable. I'll just store up all the little titbits that he lets slip!

I'm not happy about the Doctor going out on his own in his current state of mind, but he's promised he'll be only out there for five minutes.

Send from my iPhone

_Comments: 1 so far._

_S.J. Smith: _Trust me, the Doctor can get into an awful lot of trouble in five minutes!Hurry up and follow him!

The wardrobe is to your left through the door and up the spiral staircase. The TARDIS should present you with the most suitable clothes for your planet and time period. That's if she knows, poor thing.

Good luck! Keep us posted!

And hurry! _1 minute ago._

_Sun, Sand and Sentient Sea Creatures_

_Published by Quick on January 4, 2010. 30 minutes ago. 8 Comments._

The Doctor promised me a warm and tropical planet with beaches after the chill of Ood Sphere and mid-winter England. The diamond beach on Acadia apparently cuts your feet to ribbons when you walk on it. So instead, we're off to Alpha Centauri, the closest solar system to Earth. Apparently, it's a sun-seeker's paradise. Three suns. Warm seas. And several billion intelligent one-eyed land octopuses.

I'm not certain if I like the last part. But the Doctor assures me the Alpha Centaurians are all right. He's busy flying the TARDIS right now, so I thought I'd take a moment to blog what he told me about them.

Alpha Centaurians are known as hexapods. That means 'six legs' but that only refers to their six arms. They have a spare set of limbs that they walk on, hidden under those cloaks, so they really should be 'octopods'. They're terrifying to look at. But they're a frail prey species who became sentient, so they're instinctively terrified of any creature who could eat them. At the last count, the races who could eat defenceless, shrill, tentacled bits of seafood number just about every single race out there. So Alpha Centaurians, in the company of other races, are in a constant state of hysterical terror.

They've mastered their fear by becoming the best diplomats in the universe. Alpha Centauri is the headquarters of the Galactic Federation, the golden age that occurred after the human galactic empires fell apart in the year 3375, and the non-humans took a bigger share in running things. According to the Doctor, the Galactic Federation is the high point of the universe. Trillions upon trillions of sentient beings from millions of races, living on countless planets and sharing bonds of peace and prosperity.

Then the Galactic Federation falls, and it's all downhill from there. The Dark Times last until the end of the universe.

I asked the Doctor why the Galactic Federation fell, but he got a haunted look on his face and changed the subject.

Getting back to the Alpha Centaurians, the Doctor says they're unbeatable at table tennis, because they play with paddles in each of their six arms at once. They're good at surfing too, but they're afraid of waves. And sand. And surfboards. Don't even get them started on sharks. They p

_Comments: 8 so far._

___S.J. Smith_: Is there something wrong? Your post looks cut off.

While I was on the planet Peladon, I met an Alpha Centaurian ambassador from the Galactic Federation. We actually hit it off rather well; apart from the fact he thought females were unimportant. I had a few things to say to him about that! The way they look isn't an issue after a while. You get so caught up in their personalities that you literally forget that they're hideous. Once, I heard a Peladonian guard talking about 'the monster in the throne room', and I knew Alpha was going to be in there. So I warned him so he wouldn't have one of his hysterical attacks. It turned out that the guard was talking _about_ Alpha. It got awkward after that.

My tip for Alpha Centaurians? Don't tell them any secrets. They'll blurt them out the moment somebody scares them. _20 minutes ago._

_Dr Martha: _Speaking of tips, I think we should give Dr Quick some. What advice do you wish you'd had before you set off with the Doctor? _17 minutes ago._

___S.J. Smith_: Good idea! Let's see, what do I wish I'd known? Err, where do I start?

I know, always make sure you always have some gold dust in your pocket. It's deadly to Cybermen. But you don't have to kill them. Hold up the bad and watch them leave in a hurry. _10 minutes ago._

_Mickey Freelancer: _What's my tip for the Doctor's next companion? Practice your running away. And stay away from plastic. Especially wheelie bins! _8 minutes ago._

_Dr Martha: _Don't get excited if the Doctor kisses you. A kiss doesn't mean a thing to a Time Lord. It's a genetic transfer, that's all. _5 minutes ago._

_Mickey Freelancer:_ Bitter much, wifey? Want to genetic transfer? _4 minutes ago._

_Dr Martha: _Shut up, hubby. _3 minutes ago._

_Interstellar Sex God: _Stop bickering, you two.

Quick, darling! Have I got some tips for you! Big tips! Give me an hour or so and I'll whip you up a whole FAQ. That's if you're not being attacked by Daleks right now. Why is your post cut off? _2 minutes ago._


	9. Chapter 9: Dead Venice

**Chapter 9: Dead Venice**

Quick sprinted up the spiral staircase, and opened the door to the TARDIS's wardrobe. She'd run through it before, but the scene hadn't really registered. She'd been under the thrall of Uncanny Valley. Now that she had a chance to look properly, she gasped in delight.

Ten thousand circular racks, hung with a bright jumble of clothes from every era of every planet, filled a room so vast that she could barely see to the other side. And this was only the first floor of the wardrobe. Spiral staircases led higher and lower.

Enchanted, she took a few steps forward, and flipped through the hangers on the nearest rack. A cave woman's fur cape nestled between a black Chanel suit, and a purple dress designed for an alien with three arms. She lifted out the dress, and held it aloft in amazement. Then she hastily put it back, remembering that she was in a hurry. Some other time she would browse through this incredible collection of clothing. Right now, she had to get changed, and meet the Doctor.

"What have you got for me, TARDIS?" she asked, falling into the Doctor's habit of talking to the vehicle without expecting a word in reply.

The racks began to spin. The clothing swung outward, and outfits leaped from rack to rack like frogs on lilypads. Quick took a step backwards and watched, full of wonder and anticipation. What would the TARDIS suggest for Venice, in the year 1347? A homespun peasant dress? The rich embroidered silks and satins of a lady?

The racks slowed, and came to a stop. Hanging on the nearest rack was...

A red spacesuit.

Quick stared at it in dismay. "TARDIS," she said. "I can't wear a spacesuit in medieval Venice! They'll burn me as a witch! Do you have anything a little less attention grabbing?"

The clothing shuffled. Fanciful Venetian party clothes appeared, with masks and ribbons. Long dresses slid past. Then the TARDIS appeared to make up her mind. The medieval dresses vanished, and the spacesuit reappeared.

Quick was crestfallen. The poor TARDIS! Her timing was out by hundreds of years. No wonder the Doctor was worried about her.

No sooner had she thought this, the Yowling began.

It howled through her brain, a thousand times worse than before, filling her with such agonising loneliness and grief that she doubled over, instinctively protecting her ears with her hands. But that didn't block out the telepathic howl. On and on it went, until it ended in an unbearable crescendo.

She raised her head. She was crouched on the floor, hugging her knees, and tears were streaming down her face. The poor Doctor! She had to go to him immediately.

Scrambling to her feet, she wiped her face on her sleeve, and ran for the door without bothering to get changed. "Sorry, TARDIS. I hope you feel better soon," she called out over her shoulder. She'd have to think of an explanation for her modern appearance. Perhaps she could beg or borrow some clothes outside after she'd found the Doctor?

The air rippled with heat, and her ears popped, as she stepped outside the TARDIS. It was like stepping into a blast furnace. But what struck her most was the smell.

Rotting fish. Gagging, she covered her nose and mouth with her sleeve. Was this why the TARDIS had offered the spacesuit? She closed the double doors, and gave them a pat. The smell of long dead fish wasn't fatal, and she'd become accustomed to bad smells during her medical training. The trick was to breathe shallowly until the nose shut down in self-defence. Steeling herself, she lowered her sleeve, and started jogging in the direction of the Yowling. It had come from around the corner of the Piazza San Marco. The Doctor must be standing by the lagoon.

A dried up trail next to the TARDIS was heading in the same direction. Had a fisherman dragged a sackful of rotting fish this way? It certainly smelled like it, and he'd passed recently too. The trail was dry by the TARDIS, but she could see it got wetter in the distance.

At least it was proof that someone still lived here. The silence, now that the Yowling had stopped, was eerie. There wasn't a single voice to be heard. No bird song. No sound of boats or lapping water from out on the lagoon, which the buildings hid. Her footsteps echoed.

A sudden movement out of the corner of her eye and a loud cracking sound made her spin around. The iron railings under the nearest archway were slumping down, apparently at the mere sound of her footsteps. Cautiously glancing about, she approached the railings, and poked what remained of them with a finger. They crumbled into a shower of rust particles, and she backed away.

What was going on? Venice was not only deserted and suffering from a heatwave, it was falling apart. Was it something to do with the disturbance in the Time Vortex, which had so alarmed the Doctor, and injured the TARDIS?

Now she could see in the distance, a tall thin figure completely covered in a black robe. It was he who was leaving the trail. But he wasn't dragging a sackful of rotting fish. Instead, the stinking water was dripping from the bottom of his robes. He was lurching away from her, taking small, dragging steps, and his back was hunched as though it ached.

Quick shuddered as the figure apparently heard her footsteps, paused, and slowly turned around. A black mask, shaped like a bird's face with a long, downward curving bill, hid his face.

A plague mask, she thought. They used to stuff the hollow bill with herbs, because they thought the smell would protect them from the plague. Looks like the Doctor guessed the year right. But why is that man wet and smelling of fish? I've never heard of those things being used as plague remedies before.

The figure raised a shrouded arm, and beckoned her closer.

She obeyed unwillingly. There was something about that figure that made her want to run in the opposite direction. But curiosity and politeness got the better of her. She forced a smile as she drew nearer. "Hullo," she said. "Is there anything I can do to help you? What has happened here?"

Dark eyes glinted at her through the eyeholes in the mask. "Water has left us," the figure said. His voice was deep and guttural, with an odd bubbling sound behind it, as though he were breathing through a hookah pipe. "Here we have rock, but no water. No water, but rock. If only there were water..."

His words made no sense but she could feel the intense emotion behind them. He was sad, but underneath the sadness was terrible anger. "What happened to the water?" she asked.

"The Drummer stole it, just like before." His eyes glinted. "You should know."

"The Drummer?" Quick shook her head. The man was mad. And what was that strange bubbling sound? "I don't understand. What do you mean you have no water? You're soaking wet, and Venice is built on a lagoon," she said. "It's the City of Water-"

The man snarled, and cut her off. "You lied to us. Take this gift, you said. It can make anything, anything you want. We wanted water. We made the City of Water with your gift. But the Drummer stole the water away. Now we have rock, but no water."

"I'm looking for a man," she said, not wanting to continue the conversation. The figure was building up into a towering rage. "He has dark hair, and a sort of bow around his neck."

The figure in black became motionless, and she didn't like the way he was staring at her.

"Over there." He pointed at the place where the square turned to the south, in the direction of the still-invisible lagoon.

She didn't trust him, but she could definitely see something dark under the arches. Could it hurt to take a closer look? After all, she knew the Doctor was in that direction. "Thank you," she said, and hurried off, rubbing her temples. All of a sudden, she was developing a splitting headache. Was it caused by the stench of fish?

But a far worse stench entered her nostrils as she approached the place the figure had indicated.

Human decomposition.

"Oh no," she muttered, breaking into a run that seemed to hammer nails into her already aching skull.

A pool of blood was clotting and darkening in the shadows of the archway. Little else remained. A few fragments of flesh, traces of splintered bone, a well-chewed foot. The victim appeared to have been torn apart and devoured by wild animals.

"Doctor," she wailed, dropping to her knees by the pool of blood. No, it couldn't be. The Doctor couldn't be dead. It had to be someone else. Surely the Doctor wouldn't look so human inside...

Then the Yowling tore through her head again. Though the pain of it, and her headache combined were enough to make her whimper, she was relieved. The Doctor was alive. So who was this?

She reached into the gore, and picked up a stained piece of material, inspecting it with a growing sense of disbelief. Red plastic. The pool of blood was littered with fragments of red plastic. Broken glass too, and what remained of a helmet.

Whoever this was, they'd been wearing a spacesuit when they'd died.

A rectangle of metal caught her eye. She pulled it out, and wiped it on a tissue from her pocket. It was some kind of identification badge but highly advanced. The photographs and writing moved as though it were a wafer-thin television. The face of a middle aged man with long dark hair stared at her solemnly, and blinked. She read his name.

Ambassador Lloyd Skinner.

A futuristic pistol lay nearby, emitting tiny blue sparks. The barrel had been bitten clean off, and several triangular serrated teeth were still embedded in the metal.

Were these the remains of a visitor from the future, trapped by the disturbance in the Time Vortex just like herself and the Doctor? If so, had the creatures that had attacked him come from the future too? She couldn't think of anything on Earth that had teeth like that.

Except, perhaps, a shark.

Dragging footsteps behind her made her turn, and stand up in a hurry. The resulting stab of pain through her head made her stagger.

The black robed figure was lurching towards her.

"Stop right there," she said. Why was she so dizzy? She hadn't passed out at an autopsy since her first one, and that was more years ago than she cared to count.

He didn't stop. More black robed and masked figures like him were approaching from all directions.

"You found the man," the first figure bubbled.

"What happened to him?" she asked. But she was beginning to suspect the answer.

"We happened to him, human. This is our place," said another figure. Her voice also bubbled, and so did her mocking laughter.

"Who are you? How did you get to Earth?" Quick asked, backing away, and looking for an escape route. The black robed figures didn't seem to be fast, but she wasn't about to bet her life on that.

"We are the Selachi. This is our home planet, not Earth," bubbled the first figure. Slowly, he reached up, and removed his mask.

His face was monstrous. Quick choked back a scream. Vast, soulless black eyes, without apparent lids or pupils, glared at her from a grey face. His skin had the texture of sandpaper, and his nostrils were slits.

But worst of all was his mouth. Inhumanly wide, downward curved, and lipless, it opened to reveal row upon row of triangular serrated teeth. They matched the teeth that had broken off in the Ambassador's pistol.

The male Selachi seemed pleased by her horrified expression. He grinned, and attempted to speak, but breathing the air seemed to cause him pain. Twitching all over, he thrust his mask back onto his face, and the bubbling sound began again. This time it had the rhythm of panting.

It wasn't a plague mask, Quick realised. It was a respirator - for a fish. This wasn't Venice, it was some kind of copy, on an alien planet infested with murderous land sharks.

What was wrong with the atmosphere? Spots were dancing before her eyes, and she wondered if she was going to pass out. I should have put on that spacesuit, she thought. But it's too late now. I have to find the Doctor, and get back to the TARDIS.

The male Selachi began to speak again through his mask. "You left the water," he said accusingly.

Quick took a step away from him. "What do you-?" she began.

"All humanity evolved in the seas, millions of years before they even became human. Then you left the water behind. You abandoned your seas. But the Selachi did not."

"We never will, even though the seas have left us," said the female Selachi. She was edging closer from the other side. Quick was trapped between them.

"The Galactic Federation will not steal us away," said the male. "YOU will not steal us. We will eat you first."

All of the black robed figures were were closing in now. "I'm not part of the Galactic Federation," Quick pleaded. "I'm not even from this time period. I arrived here by accident."

"You lie," said the female, She reached out with her shrouded arms.

Quick ducked, and saw the arms pass over her head. But the male Selachi grabbed her from behind. He was strong, and cold, and stank horribly enough to make her eyes water. The curved bill of his mask came down over her shoulder. With an instinct born of terror, she grabbed the bill, and pulled on it hard. The mask came off in her hands, and she threw it as far as she could.

He released her immediately, and tottered after his mask, choking for breath.

The female made another grab, but Quick dodged between her arms, yanked off her mask too, and flung it over her shoulder.

Then Quick ran for it. She dodged past the other Selachi, who were snarling with rage, and ran in the direction of the Yowling, following the Piazza San Marco as it turned south. What she saw around the corner confirmed that she was on an alien planet.

Where the lagoon should have been was a barren stony plain, like the floor of a dried-up sea. A strange mountain, eroded into the shape of a White Queen chess piece, loomed on the horizon.

Behind the mountain, a second sun was rising. She couldn't believe her eyes, and slowed her run to double check. Yes, there was a yellow sun overheard, and another, redder sun rising in the south.

By edge of the square where the lagoon should have started, stood a gypsy caravan. It was painted black, and along the side, in a graceful flowing white script, were the words, 'Regina Bianca'. Hitched to the caravan was a beautiful black horse. He stood quietly in his harness. No driver could be seen.

The Yowling began again, from behind the caravan. She'd found the Doctor! Staggering, ready to faint from relief and the burning in her lungs and head, she glanced over her shoulder.

The Selachi had recovered their masks, and were lurching down the square towards her. She only had a minute or so before they arrived.

"Doctor!" she shouted, but it came out as a croak. Even her throat was burning.

She tottered around the caravan. Behind it, a man was standing with his back to her, watching the mountain with his hands on his hips. He was the source of the Yowling, but he wasn't the Doctor.

He turned to face her. He was tall, slim, and as tattered and filthy as a scarecrow. His mattered hair and beard reached to his waist, and his fingers twitched rhythmically. Yet somehow, there was such poise and confidence in his bearing that it was difficult to believe that the telepathic cry for help was emanating from him. His smile was broad, and his teeth straight and white.

"I knew the Doctor had arrived. I could smell him." He arched an eyebrow, apparently amused. "You must be one of his companions."

Quick could only nod dumbly, with her mouth open. It wasn't just the shock of finding another Time Lord, after being told that the Doctor was the last of his kind.

No, the really unexpected thing was the new Time Lord's voice...

"Another companion," the man rolled his eyes, still smiling. "How quickly he goes through them! Do you know who I am?"

His voice was as familiar, trustworthy, and comforting as baked beans on toast. She must have heard it a thousand times on the evening news, while she'd sat on her sofa eating dinner. She'd heard it on the television in the hospital waiting room every time she'd gone in to ask for the next patient. That voice was a part of her life back on Earth.

"I do know you," she said, finding her voice at last. "You're Prime Minister Harold Saxon."

_oOoOoOo_

_**Author's Notes**__: _

_The Master just can't ditch that old alias, can he? ;-)_

_Please review! It's a great encouragement to write._


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